silt

CEFRC1

/sɪlt/

noun · verb

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    Fine soil carried and left by water.

  2. 02

    noun

    Extra detail

    A particle from 3.9 to 62.5 microns in diameter, following the Wentworth scale.

Examples

  • The great river was dark with silt.

  • The river was cloudy with silt.

At a glance

Sits at C1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
2
Citations
4
Synonyms
1

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. Any material with similar physical characteristics, regardless of its origins or transport.

  2. Mud or fine earth deposited from running or standing water.

verb

Extra meaning

  1. To clog or fill with silt.

More examples

In context

  • Above the lower headcut, phreatophytic mesquite and little leaf sumac hug the banks, drawing pendulate water from the silts remaining from former marsh deposits and sending long taproots into channel stores.

  • A large tube is then followed over several silt banks to surface after a total dive of 200 m in a large passage containing an active streamway – The San Agustin Way. 5 m before the passage surfaces another line junction is passed, ...

  • They are city-dwellers, men whose lives pass in the shadows of buildings, whose lungs are silted with coalsmoke, and few will ever cross the sea.

Synonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The river deposited a layer of blank on the floodplain after the heavy rain.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

PIE word *sḗh₂l From Middle English silte, cilte, cylte, perhaps from Middle English silen ("to filter; strain"; equivalent to sile + -t), or cognate with Norwegian and Danish sylt (“salt marsh”), Middle Low German sulte (“salt-marsh”), German Sülze (“meat in aspic”), ultimately from Proto-Germanic *sultijō (“salty water; brine”). Related to Old English sealt (“salt”).