Definitions

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

  • adjective Containing or yielding salt.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In geology, noting a formation containing a considerable amount of rocksalt, or yielding brine in economically valuable quantity. Saliferous beds are found in almost all the divisions of the geological series, from the lowest to the highest.
  • Bearing or containing salt: said of plants that grow in saline soil.

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

  • adjective Producing, or impregnated with, salt.
  • adjective (Geol.) the New Red Sandstone system of some geologists; -- so called because, in Europe, this formation contains beds of salt. The saliferous beds of New York State belong largely to the Salina period of the Upper Silurian. See the Chart of Geology.

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

  • adjective Yielding or containing salt; saliniferous

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

  • adjective containing or yielding salt

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word saliferous.

Examples

  • The appearance of the country was remarkable, from being covered by a thick crust of common salt, and of a stratified saliferous alluvium, which seems to have been deposited as the land slowly rose above the level of the sea.

    Journal of researches into the geology and natural history of the various countries visited by H.M.S. Beagle 2003

  • The appearance of the country was remarkable, from being covered by a thick crust of common salt, and of a stratified saliferous alluvium, which seems to have been deposited as the land slowly rose above the level of the sea.

    Journal of researches into the geology and natural history of the various countries visited by H.M.S. Beagle 2003

  • From any part of the salt tract one may see the boundary of the inner arable part of the district fringed with long lines of trees, from which every morning the villagers drive their cattle out into the saliferous plains to graze.

    Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" Various

  • I find since that Dr Wilson states these rocks to be highly saliferous, and says the Arabs scrape them with knives to obtain saltpetre for making their rude gunpowder.

    Byeways in Palestine James Finn

  • The appearance of the country was remarkable, from being covered by a thick crust of common salt, and of a stratified saliferous alluvium, which seems to have been deposited as the land slowly rose above the level of the sea.

    Chapter XVI 1909

  • Sir Roderick Murchison and his friends were at first inclined to explain these phenomena by supposing that the chief fissure communicated with some surface of rock-salt, 'the saliferous vapours of which might be so rapidly evaporated or changed in escaping to an intensely hot and dry atmosphere as to produce ice and snow.'

    Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland 1881

  • It overlies a bed of saliferous sandstone which has been worked for salt.

    The Andes and the Amazon Across the Continent of South America James Orton 1853

  • Blanco, on gneiss; and in the peninsula of Araya, on saliferous clay.

    Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America 1851

  • Now, in the peninsula of Araya, and in the island of Marguerita, saliferous clay impregnated with bitumen is met with in connexion with this early formation, nearly as gem-salt appears in Calabria in flakes, in basins inclosed in strata of granite and gneiss.

    Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America 1851

  • Negras for one of the strata of compact limestone without grains of quartz and petrifactions, which are frequently found amidst the tertiary conglomerate of Barigon and of the Castillo de Cumana; the saliferous clay of Araya would appear to them analogous to the plastic clay of Paris, * or to the clayey shelves (dief et tourtia) of secondary sandstone with lignites, containing salt-springs, in Belgium and Westphalia.

    Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America 1851

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.