Word Finder - clays

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A mineral substance made up of small crystals of silica and alumina, that is ductile when moist; the material of pre-fired ceramics.

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An earth material with ductile qualities.

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A tennis court surface made of crushed stone, brick, shale, or other unbound mineral aggregate.

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The French Open is played on clay.

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The material of the human body.

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A particle less than 3.9 microns in diameter, following the Wentworth scale.

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A clay pipe for smoking tobacco.

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A clay pigeon.

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We went shooting clays at the weekend.

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Land or territory of a country or other political region, especially when subject to territorial claims

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Danzig is rightfully German clay.

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To add clay to, to spread clay onto.

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(of sugar) To purify using clay.

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1809, Jonathan Williams, On the Process of Claying Sugar, in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Volume 6.

The earlier wells in Pennsylvania consisted of three sections, the first formed of surface clays and gravels, the second of stratified rocks containing water, and the third of stratified rocks, including the oil-sands, usually free from water.

Clays of all qualities and colours abound.

The best soils are in the west section, where limestone clays or shell marls are common.

It is marked by grey clays and sands, lignitic fossiliferous clays, beds of lignite or brown coal, sometimes 8 ft.

The latest Cretaceous is the Ripley formation, which lies west of the northern part of the last-named, and, about Scooba, in a small strip, the most southerly of the Cretaceous - it is composed of coarse sandstones, hard crystalline white limestones, clays, sands, phosphatic greensands, and darkcoloured, micaceous, glauconitic marls; its greatest thickness is about 280 ft.

The Jackson formation south-west of the Lisbon beds, is made up chiefly of grey calcareous clay marls, bluish lignitic clays, green-sand and grey siliceous sands.

They yield valuable coals, clays, marls and ganister.

Sandy soils are made thereby too dry and leachy, and it is a questionable proceeding to turn the heavy clays upon the top. Planters are, as a result, divided in opinion as to the wisdom of subsoiling.

Eastwards the mountain system, the Jebel Sangeli, maintains the same general character as far as Bandar Gori (Las Korai), where the precipitous northern cliffs approach within 200 or 300 yards of the gulf, their bare brown rocks and clays presenting the same uninviting appearance as the light brown hills skirting the Red Sea.

Tobacco is most generally cultivated on loose red soils, which are rich in clays and silicates; and sugar-cane preferably on the black and mulatto soils; but in general, contrary to prevalent suppositions, colour is no test of quality and not a very valuable guide in the setting of crops.

Even in the soils which farmers speak of as stiff clays it is rarely present to the extent of more than I or 2%.

Where the soil grains are quite free from each other the smaller grains tend to fill up the spaces between the larger ones; hence it might be concluded that in clays the amount of pore-space would be less than in coarser sands.

This is the case in " puddled " clays, but in ordinary clay soils the excessively minute particles of which they largely consist tend to form groups of comparatively large composite grains and it is in such natural soils that the pore-space is largest.

In certain sandy soils and in a few stiff clays it may amount to less than 4%, while in others in limestone and chalk districts there may be 50 to 80% present.

It tends to improve the tilth and the capillarity of the soil by binding sands together somewhat and by opening up clays.

The addition of small quantities of lime, especially in a caustic form, to stiff greasy clays makes them much more porous and pliable.

It is this power of creating a more crumbly tilth on stiff clays that makes lime so valuable to the farmer.

Generally speaking light poor lands deficient in organic matter will need the less caustic form or chalk, while quicklime will be most satisfactory on the stiff clays and richer soils.

The oldest rocks of Barbados, known as the Scotland series, are of shallow water origin, consisting of coarse grits, brown sandstones and sandy clays, in places saturated with petroleum and traversed by veins of manjak.

Sandstone, and clays suitable for brick-making, are found in the district of Scotland, so called from a fancied resemblance to the Highlands of North Britain.

He died in 1427, at the age of seventy-six, in the seclusion of the temple where he had passed the whole of his clays.

The soft shales or clays of the hills bounding the valley render these hills especially subject to the action of denudation, and the result, in rounded slopes and easily accessible crests, determines the nature of the easy tracks and passes which intersect them.

Those of economic value are kaolin, mined chiefly in the vicinity of Hockessin, New Castle county, the static kaolin product being exceeded in 1903 only by that of Pennsylvania among the states of the United States; granite, used for road-making and rough construction work, found near Wilmington; and brick and tile clays; but the value of their total product in 1902 was less than $500,000.

The actual coal measure strata, consisting mainly of shales and clays, are generally impervious to water, but when strata of a permeable character are sunk through, such as the magnesian limestone of the north of England, the Permian sandstones of the central counties, or the chalk and greensand in the north of France and Westphalia, special methods are required in order to pass the water-bearing beds, and to protect the shaft and workings from the influx of water subsequently.

Geologically the region is made up of Carboniferous limestones, clay slates and sandstones, containing anthracite and coal; of Cretaceous marls, chalk, sandstone and greensands - chalk cliffs, in fact, accompany the Don for 200 m.; and of Miocene limestones and clays.

Whilst pyrites is found abundantly in the older crystalline rocks and slates, marcasite is more abundant in clays, and has often been formed as a concretion around organic remains.

Sometimes the phosphate is found at the surface, but generally it is covered by alluvial sands and clays.

There are also deposits of clay suitable for making bricks, terra-cotta and tiles in nearly every county outside of this valley, and there are some pottery clays in Albany and Onondaga counties.

There are large deposits of glacial and residual clays and clay shales throughout the state.

The valley, which extends from the borders of Sussex to Hythe, is occupied chiefly by the Weald clays, which contain a considerable number of marine and freshwater fossils.

The sands and clays found here are fine and soft, and as there is scant vegetation to protect the hillsides they are easily eroded by the rains.

Good clays for the manufacture of tile and brick are found at numerous places.

Near Luang Prabang, just beyond the border, in French territory, limestones with Productus and Schwagerina, like the Productus limestone of the Indian Salt Range, have been found; also red clays and grauwacke with plants similar to those of the Raniganj beds; and violet clays with Dicynodon, supposed to be the equivalents of the Panche series of India.

Brick, potter's and tile clays are obtained most largely along the west border of the Coastal Plain, and fire-clay from the coal region of West Maryland; in 1907 the value of clay products was $1,886,362.

The former consists of sandstones and clays, and the fossils found in.

Associated with these irregular escarpments are occasional rectilinear ridges, the work of extensive erosion on monoclinal structures, of whick Echo Cliffs, east of the Painted Desert (so called from its manycoloured sandstones and clays), is a good example.

Another consequence of revived erosion is seen in the occurrence of great landslides, where the removal of weak (Permian) clays has sapped the face of the Vermilion Cliffs (Triassic sandstone), so that huge slices of the cliff face have slid down and forward a mile or two, all shattered into a confused tumult of forms for a score or more of miles along the cliff base.

The Lafayette formation has been the occasion of much difference of opinion, but is by many held to be a non-marine formation, made up of gravels, sands and clays, accumulated on land, chiefly through the agency of rain and rivers.

Round it the Palaeozoic sands and clays, largely derived from its own waste, were deposited as nearly horizontal beds, in many places still almost undisturbed.

North of the mineral region is the "Cereal Belt," embracing the Tennessee Valley and the counties beyond, whose richest soils are the red clays and dark loams of the river valley; north of which are less fertile soils, produced by siliceous and sandstone formations.

The soft limestone underlying this region is covered, in the uplands, with grey, sandy soils, which have a subsoil of loam; in the lowlands the surface soils are loams, the subsoils clays.

Aluminium silicate is the chemical body of which all clays are nominally composed.

Kaolin or China clay is essentially a pure disilicate (Al 2 O 3.2SiO 2.2H 2 O), occurring in large beds almost throughout the world, and containing in its anhydrous state 2 4.4% of the metal, which, however, in common clays is more or less replaced by calcium, magnesium, and the alkalis, the proportion of silica sometimes reaching 70%.

Forming the basis of all clays, aluminium silicates play a prominent part in the manufacture of pottery and porcelain.

It is believed that the bluish colour of many clays and limestones is referable to the presence of finely divided pyrites, and it is known that certain deposits of blue mud now forming around continental shores owe their colour, in part, to disseminated iron sulphide.

No Permian beds are known, and for many years Mesozoic deposits were supposed to be entirely absent, but Triassic clays and sandstones with Daonella have been found in the upper part of the basin of the Kwalu (East Sumatra).

At Trezza, on the eastern base of the mountain, basaltic rocks occur associated with fossiliferous Pliocene clays.

The earlier period is characterized by the practice of inhumation in harrows made of clays, stones or sand, according to the district.

The extremely primitive writing of those clays was quite incapable of rendering such minute differences as can have existed between the pronunciation of Mecca and that of Medina.

In the Kharga Oasis the upper portion consists of variously colored unfossiliferous clays with intercalated bands of sandstone containing fossil silicified woods (Nicolia Aegyptiaca and A raucarioxylon Aegypticum).