manure

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Material, especially barnyard or stable dung, often with discarded animal bedding, used to fertilize soil.
2. v. To fertilize (soil) by applying material such as barnyard dung.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. 1. To manage; regulate by care or attention.—2. To cultivate by manual labor; till; develop by culture.
2. To apply manure to; treat with a fertilizer or fertilizing materials or elements: as, to manure a field or a crop.
3. To serve as manure for.
4. n. Any substance added to the soil with the view of rendering it more fertile; specifically, and as used in leases and other contracts relating to real property, the excrementitious product of live stock, with refuse litter, accumulated, and used for enriching the land. Animal substances employed as manures comprehend the putrefying carcasses of animals, ground bones, blood, the excrements of animals, as the dung of horses, cattle, sheep, poultry, etc., urine, guano (the decomposed excrement of aquatic birds, also of bats), the scrapings of leather and horn, the refuse of the shambles, the hair or wool of animals, etc. Liquid manure, consisting of town sewage, the drainings of dung-heaps, stables, and cow-houses, etc., is largely employed in many places. Almost every kind of vegetable substance, in one state or another, is used as manure. The principal mineral matters employed as manures are lime and other alkaline substances, chalk, sand, clay, marl, various sulphates, phosphates, nitrates, etc.
5. n. The advent of commercial fertilizers has made it necessary to distinguish farm or natural manures and artificial manures. Recent usage tends to restrict the term manure to the former. In scientific agriculture, only those applications are properly manures which directly supply plant-food, and those which serve mainly to improve the soil physically (as gypsum, lime, marl) are distinguished as soil amendments or improvers. This distinction affects also, to some extent, the term fertilizer. See artificial manure.
6. n. Unfermented dung. Also called fresh or long manure.

Wiktionary

1. v. To cultivate by manual labor; to till; hence, to develop by culture.
2. v. To apply manure (as fertilizer or soil improver).
3. n. Animal excrement, especially that of common domestic farm animals and when used as fertilizer. Generally speaking, from cows, horses, sheep, pigs and chickens.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. v. obsolete To cultivate by manual labor; to till; hence, to develop by culture.
2. v. To apply manure to; to enrich, as land, by the application of a fertilizing substance.
3. n. Any matter which makes land productive; a fertilizing substance. dung, the contents of stables and barnyards, decaying animal or vegetable substances, etc.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. spread manure, as for fertilization
2. n. any animal or plant material used to fertilize land especially animal excreta usually with litter material