Crossword clues for caliche
The Collaborative International Dictionary
caliche \ca*li"che\ (k[.a]*l[=e]"ch[-e]), n.
a deposit of sand or clay on the surface containing crystallized salts such as sodium chloride or sodium nitrate; -- used especially of the sodium nitrate deposits of Chile and Peru.
--RHUDa stratum of calcium carbonate in the soil of an arid or semiarid region.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
sodium nitrate deposits in Chile and Peru, 1858, from American Spanish, from Spanish caliche "pebble in a brick," from Latin calx "pebble" (see chalk (n.)).
Wiktionary
n. 1 (context mineral English) A crude form of sodium nitrate from South America; used as a fertilizer. 2 A layer of hard clay subsoil or sedimentary rock; hardpan.
WordNet
n. crust or layer of hard subsoil encrusted with calcium-carbonate occurring in arid or semiarid regions [syn: hardpan]
nitrate-bearing rock or gravel of the sodium nitrate deposits of Chile and Peru
Wikipedia
Caliche (ka-lee'-chee, or sometimes klee'-chee) is a sedimentary rock, a hardened natural cement of calcium carbonate that binds other materials—such as gravel, sand, clay, and silt. It occurs worldwide, in aridisol and mollisol soil orders—generally in arid or semiarid regions, including in central and western Australia, in the Kalahari Desert, in the High Plains of the western USA, in the Sonoran Desert, and in Eastern Saudi Arabia Al-Hasa. Caliche is also known as hardpan, calcrete, kankar (in India), or duricrust. The term caliche is Spanish and is originally from the Latin calx, meaning lime.
Caliche is generally light-colored, but can range from white to light pink to reddish-brown, depending on the impurities present. It generally occurs on or near the surface, but can be found in deeper subsoil deposits, as well. Layers vary from a few inches to feet thick, and multiple layers can exist in a single location.
In northern Chile and Peru, caliche also refers to mineral deposits that include nitrate salts. Caliche can also refer to various claylike deposits in Mexico and Colombia. In addition, it has been used to describe some forms of quartzite, bauxite, kaolinite, laterite, chalcedony, opal, and soda niter.
A similar material, composed of calcium sulfate rather than calcium carbonate, is called gypcrust.
Caliche may refer to:
- Caliche, a hardened deposit of calcium carbonate.
- Caliche slang, a collection of slang words unique to Central American Spanish.
Usage examples of "caliche".
I left that coach road on what was almost a sudden impulse when I noticed it was passing through a ridge with lots of slickrock and little deep caliche.
The soil here was typical of a sagebrush flat: loose, light, and with enough fine caliche particles to form a crust.
His friends regarded him with a measure of respect and hatred, beseeching him to put in a good word for them with the Angel of Death, or whoever it was with whom he held counsel, even as they capsized over backward into the adobe and caliche darkness of their own graves.
A mixture of sand and fine brown adobe clays and gray caliche, it had the texture, viscosity, and crippling powers of a tar pit.
Bisti Badlands now, looking into the edge of a wilderness where eons of time had uncovered alternating layers of gray shale, pink sandstone, yellow caliche, and black streaks of coal.
The moonlight reflecting off the pale cement streets and beige lawns turned everything gray-white, the color of caliche rock.
Erosion had carved the tuff wherever bracks in the andesite exposed it, forming the tunnel-bottomed ravines, and also revealing great seams of caliche, trapped between the two layers.
The cross was encrusted in caliche, a hard crust of calcium carbonate.
Ahead of them, to the west, the caliche sloped gently down again, pocked by dry gulches the size of ballparks.