All 3 Uses of
loam
in
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
- The shovelfuls of loam, black as jet, brought there by the river when it was as wide as the whole valley, were an essence of soils, pounded champaigns of the past, steeped, refined, and subtilized to extraordinary richness, out of which came all the fertility of the mead, and of the cattle grazing there.†
Chpt 4loam = rich soil
- Within the remote depths of his constitution, so gentle and affectionate as he was in general, there lay hidden a hard logical deposit, like a vein of metal in a soft loam, which turned the edge of everything that attempted to traverse it.†
Chpt 5 *
- In time she reached the edge of the vast escarpment below which stretched the loamy Vale of Blackmoor, now lying misty and still in the dawn.†
Chpt 5loamy = rich
Definitions:
-
(1)
(loam) a rich soil consisting of a mixture of sand and clay and decaying organic materials
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Much less commonly, loam can refer to a mix of soil and straw used to make bricks or plaster walls. In that form, it can also be used as a verb--for example, "She loamed the wall."