adobe
11
5.1
- noun
- /əˈdoʊbi/
:
adobe
- Make it out of adobe brick, like the Indians.
- adobe bricks
- adobe walls
- adobe mosque
Examples
-
The fort's jail was housed in a low-roofed adobe building across the frost-browned parade ground.
Fiction book (1992) -
The small windows pierced in the two-foot-thick adobe walls seemed like ghost eyes from a time long, long ago.
Fiction book (1993) -
Further south, there are some fine, old adobe churches.
-
The setting sun cast gold, red, and orange lights against the adobe walls of her father's lodge.
Fiction book (1995) -
We passed the tiny Romero adobe; it's just down the block.
Fiction book (1995) -
Here we follow our Indian guide as we walk through the earthen streets, past adobe homes.
Academic text (2000) -
The sun-warmed adobe buildings stacked one upon another seemed to glow against the white landscape.
Fiction book (1993) -
The Pueblos live in the rock and adobe villages, often tending communally owned fields.
Fiction book (1993) -
Men repaired sagging roofs, and women smeared new layers of adobe mud over the outside walls.
Fiction book (1995) -
In rural areas of Latin America, adobe houses with thatched roofs are fixtures of the landscape.
Synonyms
1
5.0
A brick made from clay and straw that dries in the sun for building in hot dry places
1
2.7
A brick made from wet earth that gets hard and is used to build walls
Compounds
1
5.0
A brick made from clay and straw that dries in the sun for building in hot dry places
- US
A wildflower with pinkish-purple bell-shaped flowers that grows in dry clay soil in California
How Hard
Surface Forms
Etymology
Adobe comes from Spanish, which came from Arabic al-ṭūb meaning 'the brick', and before that from an old Egyptian word for 'mud brick'. Think of a sun-dried 'brick' of mud and straw, and that's why an adobe is the thick earth material that keeps houses cool in hot, dry places.