Definitions

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

  • noun The dung of livestock or poultry.
  • noun Such dung, or other organic or chemical material, used to fertilize soil.
  • transitive verb To fertilize (soil) by applying material such as animal dung.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Any substance added to the soil with the view of rendering it more fertile; specifically, and as used in leases and other contracts relating to real property, the excrementitious product of live stock, with refuse litter, accumulated, and used for enriching the land.
  • 1. To manage; regulate by care or attention.—2. To cultivate by manual labor; till; develop by culture.
  • To apply manure to; treat with a fertilizer or fertilizing materials or elements: as, to manure a field or a crop.
  • To serve as manure for.
  • noun The advent of commercial fertilizers has made it necessary to distinguish farm or natural manures and artificial manures. Recent usage tends to restrict the term manure to the former. In scientific agriculture, only those applications are properly manures which directly supply plant-food, and those which serve mainly to improve the soil physically (as gypsum, lime, marl) are distinguished as soil amendments or improvers. This distinction affects also, to some extent, the term fertilizer. See artificial manure.
  • noun Unfermented dung. Also called fresh or long manure.

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

  • noun Any matter which makes land productive; a fertilizing substance.
  • transitive verb obsolete To cultivate by manual labor; to till; hence, to develop by culture.
  • transitive verb To apply manure to; to enrich, as land, by the application of a fertilizing substance.

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

  • verb To cultivate by manual labor; to till; hence, to develop by culture.
  • verb To apply manure (as fertilizer or soil improver).
  • noun Animal excrement, especially that of common domestic farm animals and when used as fertilizer. Generally speaking, from cows, horses, sheep, pigs and chickens.

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

  • verb spread manure, as for fertilization
  • noun any animal or plant material used to fertilize land especially animal excreta usually with litter material

Etymologies

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

[From Middle English manuren, to cultivate land, from Anglo-Norman mainouverer, from Vulgar Latin *manūoperāre, to work with the hands : Latin manū, ablative of manus, hand; see man- in Indo-European roots + Latin operārī, to work; see op- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English manuren ("to manure"), from Old French manovrer (whence also English maneuver), from Vulgar Latin *manuoperare ("work by hand"), from Latin manu + operari ("to work").

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  • Dr. Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary lists gooding for manure, and goolgrave for strong manure.

    May 19, 2011