silt

plural silts

1. uncountableMud or fine earth deposited from running or standing water.

   A large tube is then followed over several silt banks to surface after a total dive of 200 m in a large passage containing an active streamway – The San Agustin Way. 5 m before the passage surfaces another line junction is passed, ...

   2006, Duncan Price, Welsh Sump Index, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 41

   Synonyms: slitch

2. broadlyuncountableAny material with similar physical characteristics, regardless of its origins or transport.
3. countablegeographyA particle from 3.9 to 62.5 microns in diameter, following the Wentworth scale.

   Above the lower headcut, phreatophytic mesquite and little leaf sumac hug the banks, drawing pendulate water from the silts remaining from former marsh deposits and sending long taproots into channel stores.

   2007, Susan L. Woodward, “Modern Vegetation of the Murray Springs Area and the Upper San Pedro Valley”, in Caleb Vance Haynes, Bruce B. Huckell, editor, Murray Springs, page 58

   1 more example

   The gravels, initially deposited by surf-zone processes during the Pleistocene low stands in this area were drowned by quartzose sands, and then the prodeltaic silts and clays deposited by the seaward prograding-feather edge of the Holocene Orange Delta were subsequently integrated into the delta-front by bioturbation.

   2015 December 1, “Infaunal Benthic Communities from the Inner Shelf off Southwestern Africa Are Characterised by Generalist Species”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI

present singular third person silts · participle present silting · participle past silted · past silted

1. transitiveTo clog or fill with silt.
2. intransitiveTo become clogged with silt.

   They are city-dwellers, men whose lives pass in the shadows of buildings, whose lungs are silted with coalsmoke, and few will ever cross the sea.

   2017, Sarah Moss, “London, summer 1878”, in Signs for Lost Children, New York, N.Y.: Europa Editions, →ISBN, page 16

   1 more example

   Subject to flooding by the six small rivers coming together just west of the city, the main river below the city has long been shallow and subject to silting. The Communists have both maintained the earlier pattern of dredging the river, and have built a bypass flood canal around the city on the south side to relieve flood pressures. Though dredging can keep the river navigable for small ships, a new artificial port, Sinkang, able to take 10,000 ton ships at all times, was created at T'ang-ku. This is kept open for about two months during winter by icebreakers.

   1972, “TIENTSIN (T'IEN-CHING)”, in Encyclopedia Britannica, volume 21, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 1140, column 1

3. ambitransitiveTo flow through crevices; to percolate.