Definitions

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

  • noun A black, viscous natural bitumen.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A bituminous substance midway in consistency between asphaltum and petroleum.
  • noun Haeckel's term for the gelatinous ground-substance or mesoglcea and contained cells of various kinds, which forms the skeletogenous layer in sponges.

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

  • noun A variety of bitumen, viscid and tenacious, like pitch, unctuous to the touch, and exhaling a bituminous odor.
  • noun obsolete Mortar.

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

  • noun thick mineral pitch
  • noun mineral tar

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

  • noun a thick black tar intermediate between petroleum and asphalt

Etymologies

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

[Middle English malthe, from Latin maltha, from Greek, a mixture of wax and pitch; see mel- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Ancient Greek μάλθα (máltha)

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