loam
Americannoun
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a rich, friable soil containing a relatively equal mixture of sand and silt and a somewhat smaller proportion of clay.
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a mixture of clay, sand, straw, etc., used in making molds for founding and in plastering walls, stopping holes, etc.
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earth or soil.
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Obsolete. clay or clayey earth.
verb (used with object)
noun
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rich soil consisting of a mixture of sand, clay, and decaying organic material
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a paste of clay and sand used for making moulds in a foundry, plastering walls, etc
verb
Other Word Forms
- loaminess noun
- loamless adjective
- loamy adjective
Etymology
Origin of loam
First recorded before 900; from late Middle English lome, earlier lam(e), Old English lām; cognate with Dutch leem, German Lehm “loam, clay”; akin to lime 2
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Stories multiply like toadstools in forest loam in the fiction of Thomas Pynchon, America’s most devout skeptic of the narrative urge, yet also one of its greatest exponents.
“You could smell the heavy loam in the deep cool woods—the Yazoo and Big Black rivers were running along,” she tells Lyell after an autumn drive through rural Mississippi in 1935.
At first, settling into the moist loam, the plant is an innocent sproutling, soft and gentle, harmless, edible to browsing Herefords.
Small asides like these root this character-driven mystery in a spiritual loam, a reflection of Inglesby’s narrative contemplation of day-to-day living as an exercise in faith.
From Salon
Monday morning, workers will begin placing soil — sandy loam mixed with lightweight volcanic aggregate — on the wildlife overpass.
From Los Angeles Times
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
