Definitions

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

  • adjective Resembling, derived from, or containing sand.
  • adjective Growing or living in sandy areas.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Sandy; abounding in sand; having the properties of sand.
  • Figuratively, dry; arid.
  • Composed largely of sand or sandy particles.
  • In zoology, specifically applied to those Foraminifera whose membranous case becomes hardened by the attachment of foreign substances, as particles of sand or shelly matters.

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

  • adjective Sandy or consisting largely of sand; of the nature of sand; easily disintegrating into sand; friable.

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

  • adjective of soil Sandy.
  • adjective of a plant Growing in sandy soil.
  • adjective geology Arenitic.

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

  • adjective resembling or containing or abounding in sand; or growing in sandy areas

Etymologies

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

[From Latin harēnāceus, arēnāceus, from harēna, arēna, sand; see arena.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin arenaceus, from arena ("sand")

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Examples

  • It contains calcareous matter; the sandy soil grades down to a thick arenaceous "caliche" which is a layer of sand cemented into a limestone by interstitial deposition of calcium carbonate.

    Western Gulf coastal grasslands 2009

  • We got up at six to get the bird into the oven, so it can be totally desiccated, friable, granular, sabulous, arenaceous, the way turkey always is.

    A vlog about Thanksgiving squirrel, Mancow, guns, law school, commenters, and Madison versus New York. Ann Althouse 2007

  • So again with land animals: the differences in their stations are those of different soils and neighbourhoods; some being best adapted to a calcareous, and others to an arenaceous soil.

    Essays 2007

  • (Milam.) and arenaceous benthics (Ar. benth) dominate KC23 profile.

    Domack on the Larsen 1-A Ice Shelf « Climate Audit 2006

  • They are outliers of the main line, yon flood of verdure, climbing up and streaming down from the high, dry, and barren banks of arenaceous drift, heaped up and filmed over by the wind, and, lastly, surging through its narrow “Gate,” with the clifflets of conglomerate forming the old coast.

    The Land of Midian 2003

  • The sole, a broad expanse of loose red arenaceous matter, the washings of the plateau, is fearfully burrowed and honeycombed; it is also subject, like its sister the Sadr, to the frequent assault of

    The Land of Midian 2003

  • North of it a palm grove, lining the mouth of a broad Wady which snakes high up among the sands and stones, denotes the Hajj-station, El – Hakl (Hagul), backed by tall arenaceous buttresses.

    The Land of Midian 2003

  • Here the surface is much cut and broken by sandy Wadys, dotted with a few straggling plants: to our right was a Goz or inclined arenaceous bank, where the south wind had sifted the sand from the gravel, disposing the former in the hollows, and the latter on the crest of the ripples.

    The Land of Midian 2003

  • The _New Red Sandstone_ forms the base of the great central plains of England, and is surmounted by the oliferous marls and red arenaceous beds which pass under the succession of great oolitic terraces that stretch across England from the coasts of Dorsetshire to the north-eastern coast of Yorkshire.

    An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" With a Notice of the Author's "Explanations:" A Sequel to the Vestiges Anonymous

  • I found myself when I entered in a gloomy chamber hewn out of a brown arenaceous clay.

    Roman Mosaics Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood Hugh Macmillan

Comments

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  • Not to be confused with erinaceous.

    April 12, 2011