Definitions

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

  • adjective Containing or producing carbon

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The group with which we have to deal is called the carboniferous or coal bearing system, and it includes four classes of rocks, viz.: 1, sandstone; 2, shale or bind; 3, limestone; 4, coal and underclay.

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 Various

  • It is one great sheet of old coral-reef and coral-mud, which is now called the carboniferous limestone.

    Madam How and Lady Why Charles Kingsley 1847

  • Coal strata are nearly confined to the group termed the carboniferous formation.

    Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation Robert Chambers 1836

  • You cannot diet a patient from a book, you cannot make up the human body as you would make up a prescription, – so many parts "carboniferous," so many parts "nitrogenous" will constitute a perfect diet for a patient.

    Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not 1860

  • All that chemistry can tell us is the amount of "carboniferous" or "nitrogenous" elements discoverable in different dietetic articles.

    Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not 1860

  • Coal mining waste or spoil tips are, on the other hand, composed of fairly benign carboniferous sedimentary rocks that could be suitable for viticulture.

    Corrections and clarifications 2011

  • From his first, perhaps best book, "The Immense Journey," he showed a gift for transporting his readers across aeonic expanses—evoking the "croaking gloom of carboniferous swamps" and "the surf on Cretaceous beaches where now the wheat of Kansas rolls."

    Dispatches From the Natural World 2011

  • Mason has also got a new obsession: the carboniferous period.

    Day in the Life of an Idiot lyda222 2008

  • We found one book about life before the dinosaurs called, "WHEN BUGS WERE BIG," which is actually all about the carboniferous period, and then at the grown-up library, we found another couple that are written for teens that tell the whole story of Earth's pre-dinosaur history.

    Day in the Life of an Idiot lyda222 2008

  • What the hell is the carboniferous period, Lyda, you ask.

    Day in the Life of an Idiot lyda222 2008

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