humus

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“
Therefore when soil is wet it takes much more heat to warm it than if it were dry It will be seen that of the dry soils the humus is the warmest.

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Definitions (9)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. noun A brown or black organic substance consisting of partially or wholly decayed vegetable or animal matter that provides nutrients for plants and increases the ability of soil to retain water.
  2. noun Variant of hummus.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (4)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

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Examples (50)

  • We couldn't allow impurities such as humus or sand, or it would pull humus and sand with the dust And if it took weeks we wouldn't have the dust itself but the stuff the dust had turned into. —  August, 1947
  • This kind of charcoal-based soil carbon is remarkably stable relative to leaf-fungal humus, and as the planet continues to warm, such soils should be fairly stable and there should be little positive feedback effect. —  RealClimate
  • Your brain is also made up of this "dirt", this humus, and as regular readers know, it is my suggestion that every thought you've ever had in your life was 100\% the result of a simple electro-chemical event in your brain. —  TPN :: GDay World
  • They are nature's way of breaking down fibrous material into humus, a fine substance useful to plants. —  Nashuatelegraph.com local, state, business and sports news
  • But in proving that plants "eat" minerals, not humus, Leibig went to the opposite extreme and demeaned the practical necessity of humus, and humus-derived nutrients, for a sustainable and efficient agriculture. —  Kata Iwannhn
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This word has been looked up 85 times.

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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Latin, soil; see dhghem- in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. Latin, the earth, the ground, the soil, locative humi (= Greek χαμαί, on the ground, to the ground: see Homo, chthonic, chameleon, etc. Hence humble, humility, etc.
 

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/ˈhjuməs/
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