Meaning

(uncountable) Mud or fine earth deposited from running or standing water..

Definitions by Sense

1. (uncountable) Mud or fine earth deposited from running or standing water.
2. (uncountable, by extension) Any material with similar physical characteristics, regardless of its origins or transport.
3. (countable, geology) A particle from 3.9 to 62.5 microns in diameter, following the Wentworth scale.
4. (transitive) To clog or fill with silt.
5. (intransitive) To become clogged with silt.
6. (ambitransitive) To flow through crevices; to percolate.

Example Sentences

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, ...

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.

The gravels, initially deposited by surf-zone processes during the Pleistocene low stands in this area were drowned by quartzose sands, and then the prodeltaic silts and clays deposited by the seaward prograding-feather edge of the Holocene Orange Delta were subsequently integrated into the delta-front by bioturbation.

Subject to flooding by the six small rivers coming together just west of the city, the main river below the city has long been shallow and subject to silting. The Communists have both maintained the earlier pattern of dredging the river, and have built a bypass flood canal around the city on the south side to relieve flood pressures. Though dredging can keep the river navigable for small ships, a new artificial port, Sinkang, able to take 10,000 ton ships at all times, was created at T'ang-ku. This is kept open for about two months during winter by icebreakers.

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.

Word Forms

• silts
• silting
• silted

Synonyms for silt

Related Words

When Should You Use Silt?

Use silt when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

Practice This Word

Frequently Asked Questions