Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Soil composed of a mixture of sand, clay, silt, and organic matter.
  • noun A mixture of moist clay and sand, and often straw, used especially in making bricks and foundry molds.
  • transitive verb To fill, cover, or coat with loam.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To cover or coat with loam; clay.
  • noun A soil consisting of a natural mixture of clay and sand, the latter being present in sufficient quantity to overcome the tendency of the clay to form a coherent mass.
  • noun In founding, a mixture of sand, clay, sawdust, straw, etc., used in making the molds for castings. The compound must be plastic when wet, and hard, air-tight, and able to resist high temperatures when dry. Specifically called casting-loam.
  • noun A vessel of clay; an earthen vessel.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A kind of soil; an earthy mixture of clay and sand, with organic matter to which its fertility is chiefly due.
  • noun (Founding) A mixture of sand, clay, and other materials, used in making molds for large castings, often without a pattern.
  • noun (Founding) a mold made with loam. See Loam, n., 2.
  • noun the process or business of making loam molds.
  • noun an iron plate upon which a section of a loam mold rests, or from which it is suspended.
  • noun loam molding or loam molds.
  • intransitive verb To cover, smear, or fill with loam.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A kind of soil; an earthy mixture of clay and sand, with organic matter to which its fertility is chiefly due.
  • verb To cover, smear, or fill with loam.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a rich soil consisting of a mixture of sand and clay and decaying organic materials

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English lam, lom, clay, from Old English lām; see lei- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old English lām.

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Examples

Comments

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  • Loam-humps, he says, moles shunt

    up from delved worm-haunt

    from "Ode for Ted," Sylvia Plath

    April 14, 2008