feculence
- noun
- /ˈfɛkjʊləns/
- After the heavy rain, the garden was left in a state of feculence, with muddy puddles everywhere.
Examples
-
I felt (as I often feel) a dramatic error in the accounting, though she pressed herself to me and made me feel, thereby, in the midst of that lousy airport, with its plastic counters and vague feculence, different from myself, heroic.
Fiction book (2002) -
Nothing but feculence.
-
The river was polluted, and the feculence at the surface made it unsafe for swimming.
-
The old cheese had developed a strong odor of feculence, indicating it was time to throw it away.
Synonyms
Dirt and disgusting things that make a place very dirty
Dirt and soot that make a surface look dirty
A very dirty state with waste and rubbish
Land that is very wet and muddy and hard to walk on
A state of being made dirty, often of water or land
Dirt or mess that makes something dirty
A very strong unpleasant smell that makes people feel sick
Antonyms
How Foul
- Specialized
Surface Forms
Morphology
feculence = feculent (opaque) = fecul + ence
Formed by adding the noun-forming suffix '-ence' to the rare adjective 'feculent'; both elements are Latin-derived and not readily recognizable to average B1 learners.
Etymology
Feculence comes from the Latin root fec- (seen in the English word feces) meaning 'dregs' or 'filth'. So feculence is a handy word for the foul, muddy or settled dirt that makes water or a place dirty.