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Soil vs Clay - What's the difference?

soil | clay |

In transitive terms the difference between soil and clay

is that soil is to make dirty while clay is to add clay to, to spread clay onto.

As a proper noun Clay is

{{surname|from=occupations}.

soil

English

(wikipedia soil)

Etymology 1

From (etyl) (m), (m), . See also (l), (l).

Noun

  • (uncountable) A mixture of sand and organic material, used to support plant growth.
  • (uncountable) The unconsolidated mineral or organic material on the immediate surface of the earth that serves as a natural medium for the growth of land plants.
  • (uncountable) The unconsolidated mineral or organic matter on the surface of the earth that has been subjected to and shows effects of genetic and environmental factors of: climate (including water and temperature effects), and macro- and microorganisms, conditioned by relief, acting on parent material over a period of time. A product-soil differs from the material from which it is derived in many physical, chemical, biological, and morphological properties and characteristics.
  • Country or territory.
    • The refugees returned to their native soil .
  • That which soils or pollutes; a stain.
  • * Dryden
    • A lady's honour will not bear a soil .
  • A marshy or miry place to which a hunted boar resorts for refuge; hence, a wet place, stream, or tract of water, sought for by other game, as deer.
  • * Marston
    • As deer, being stuck, fly through many soils , / Yet still the shaft sticks fast.
  • Dung; compost; manure.
    • night soil
  • * Mortimer
    • Improve land by dung and other sort of soils .
    Synonyms
    * dirt (US) , earth
    Derived terms
    * home soil * native soil * soilless * soil pipe * topsoil
    Related terms
    * solum
    See also
    *

    Etymology 2

    From (etyl) (m), (m), .

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To make dirty.
  • * Milton
    • Our wonted ornaments now soiled and stained.
  • To become dirty or soiled.
    • Light colours soil sooner than dark ones.
  • (figurative) To stain or mar, as with infamy or disgrace; to tarnish; to sully.
    • (Shakespeare)
  • (reflexive) To dirty one's clothing by accidentally defecating while clothed.
  • To make invalid, to ruin.
  • To enrich with soil or muck; to manure.
  • * South
    • Men soil their ground, not that they love the dirt, but that they expect a crop.
    Synonyms
    * (to make dirty) smirch, besmirch, dirty
    Derived terms
    * soil oneself

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (uncountable, euphemistic) Faeces or urine etc. when found on clothes.
  • (countable, medicine) A bag containing soiled items.
    • Synonyms
    * dirt

    Etymology 3

    From (etyl) (m), from (etyl) (m), .

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A wet or marshy place in which a boar or other such game seeks refuge when hunted.

    • Etymology 4

    (etyl) saoler, .

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To feed, as cattle or horses, in the barn or an enclosure, with fresh grass or green food cut for them, instead of sending them out to pasture; hence (such food having the effect of purging them), to purge by feeding on green food.
    • to soil a horse
    (Webster 1913)

    Anagrams

    * (l), (l), (l) ----

    clay

    English

    Noun

    (en-noun)
  • A mineral substance made up of small crystals of silica and alumina, that is ductile when moist; the material of pre-fired ceramics.
  • *
  • *:Three chairs of the steamer type, all maimed, comprised the furniture of this roof-garden, with (by way of local colour) on one of the copings a row of four red clay flower-pots filled with sun-baked dust.
  • An earth material with ductile qualities.
  • (lb) A tennis court surface.
  • :
  • (lb) The material of the human body.
  • *1611 , Old Testament , King James Version, (w) 10:8-9:
    • Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about...thou hast made me as the clay .
  • *1611 , Old Testament , King James Version, (w) 64:8:
  • *:But now, O Lord, thou art our Father; we are the clay , and thou art our potter; and we are the work of thy hand.
  • (lb) A particle less than 3.9 microns in diameter, following the Wentworth scale.
  • A clay pigeon.

    • Antonyms

    * (material of the human body) soul, spirit

    Hyponyms

    * kaolin, kaoline * ball clay * fire clay * potter's clay

    Derived terms

    * ball clay * claying * clayen * clayey * claymation * clay pigeon * fire clay * modelling clay * potter's clay

    See also

    * alluvium

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To add clay to, to spread clay onto.
  • (of sugar) To purify using clay.
  • * 1776 , , Book IV, Chapter 7: Of Colonies, Part 2: Causes of Prosperity of New Colonies,
    • They amounted, therefore, to a prohibition, at first of claying' or refining sugar for any foreign market, and at present of ' claying or refining it for the market, which takes off, perhaps, more than nine-tenths of the whole produce.
  • * 1809', Jonathan Williams, '' On the Process of '''Claying Sugar'', in ''Transactions of the American Philosophical Society , Volume 6.
  • * 1985 , Stuart B. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550-1835 , page 200,
    • The Portuguese had mastered the technique of claying sugar, and other European nations tried to learn the secrets from them.

    References

    * Krueger, Dennis (December 1982). "Why On Earth Do They Call It Throwing?" Studio Potter Vol. 11, Number 1.[http://www.studiopotter.org/articles/?art=art0001] (etymology) * * Clay , New Webster Dictionary of English Language, 1980 edition.

    Anagrams

    *