Meanings
- uncountableA very dark, man-made, nutritionally dense soil found in the Amazon basin.
2004, The Review of Archæology, Volumes 25-27, Review of Archæology, page 35, The two earliest phases are preceramic and the sites are not terra preta. The earliest terra preta is associated with the Massangana Phase, which begins ca 3600 cal BC.
2 more examples
Terra Preta soils of central Amazonia exhibit approximately three times more soil organic matter, nitrogen and phosphorus and 70 times more charcoal compared to adjacent infertile soils.
2007, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, volume 362, numbers 1477-1480, Royal Society, page 1872008, Science, Volume 321, Issues 5892-5897, American Association for the Advancement of Science, page 1152, Terra preta is believed to have been an essential part of a distinctive agricultural system. According to the terra preta team, Indians slowly cleared off the forest to create farm plots and planted annual crops such as manioc […] .
Synonyms: Amazonian dark earth, ADE, Indian black earth
Synonyms & antonyms
nounA very dark, man-made, nutritionally dense soil found in the Amazon basin.
Origin
- Portugueseterra preta
- Englishterra preta
Borrowed from Portuguese terra preta, from terra (“soil”) + preta (“black”).
More words from Portuguese
Full word history & related roots →Translations
French terra preta
- terra pretavery dark, man-made, nutritionally dense soil
German Terra Preta
- Terra Pretavery dark, man-made, nutritionally dense soil
Portuguese terra preta
- terra pretavery dark, man-made, nutritionally dense soil
Cite this entry
terra preta. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/terra%20preta
“terra preta.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/terra%20preta. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “terra preta,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/terra%20preta.
Source: terra preta on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.