tepetate
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English
Etymology
Borrowed from Spanish tepetate.
Noun
tepetate (plural tepetates)
- (geology) A soil type found in volcanic regions, known for hardness, poor drainage, and poor fertility.
- 1990, Gene C. Wilken, Good Farmers: Traditional Agricultural Resource Management in Mexico and Central America:
- Where erosion has reduced the soil layer to less than planting depth or to exposed tepetate, farmers may break up and pulverize the tepetate with plows, picks, crowbars, sledgehammers, or even black powder, to form a usable soil layer.
- 2006, Rattan Lal, Encyclopedia of Soil Science, volume 2, page 1745:
- Tepetate is a vernacular Mexican term referring to a hardened land with various degrees of infertility. Tepetates are derived from volcanic material, mainly tuff. The scientific definition reserves the term tepetate for a hardened layer in soils formed from pyroclastic materials. In the Central Valley of Mexico these indurate layers are among the most striking geological features.
Translations
soil type
Further reading
Spanish
Alternative forms
Etymology
Borrowed from Classical Nahuatl tepetlatl.
Noun
tepetate m (plural tepetates)
Further reading
- “tepetate”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2024 December 10