white alkali

American  

noun

1. Agriculture. a whitish layer of mineral salts, especially sodium sulfate, sodium chloride, and magnesium sulfate, often occurring on top of soils where rainfall is low.

2. refined soda ash.

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white alkali British  

noun

1. refined sodium carbonate

2. any of several mineral salts, esp sodium sulphate, sodium chloride, and magnesium sulphate, that often appear on the surface of soils as a whitish layer in dry conditions

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

white alkali

A small, battered-looking car, grayed and caked with white alkali dust, glided alongside, and from under its swaying and disreputable top emerged someone I knew.

From The Killer by White, Stewart Edward

There was no possibility of their missing the trail—as distinct in the white alkali as in snow.

From McTeague by Norris, Frank

He saw them shoulder neck and neck along the white alkali bottom, then break to a gallop, the old man hanging to the pommel; then all disappeared round the end of the bank.

From The Freebooters of the Wilderness by Laut, Agnes C. (Agnes Christina)

Nose and nose the horses ran, their hoofs raising a cloud of white alkali dust in their wake.

From The Texan A Story of the Cattle Country by Hendryx, James B. (James Beardsley)

Below this break the mesa side pitched steeply into a great basin that was blotched with white alkali flats, wave-marked with sand dunes, and broken with jagged hills and skeleton-like ridges.

From Bloom of Cactus by Coleman, Ralph P. (Ralph Pallen)