Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A substance composed chiefly of the dung of seabirds or bats, accumulated along certain coastal areas or in caves and used as fertilizer.
- noun Any of various similar substances, such as a fertilizer prepared from ground fish parts.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A fertilizing excrement found on many small islands in the Southern Ocean and on the western coast of Africa, but chiefly on islands lying near the Peruvian coast.
- noun A fertilizer made from fishes. See
fish-manure . - To manure with guano.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A substance found in great abundance on some coasts or islands frequented by sea fowls, and composed chiefly of their excrement. It is rich in phosphates and ammonia, and is used as a powerful fertilizer.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun
Dung from a sea bird or from a bat.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the excrement of sea birds; used as fertilizer
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The guano is harvested and mixed with saliva from kimodo lizards and allowed to grow to fruition within the alimentary canals of squids culled from the Ganges and is then scraped from the ink sacs and placed in vats filled with duck heads. 23 hours later a judge emerges, ready to think.
Uh-Oh Bill Crider 2007
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Among the farming community the word guano soon became a name to conjure with, and under this title many spurious and worthless manures were attempted to be palmed off on the unwary farmer.
Manures and the principles of manuring Charles Morton Aikman
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Great, too, are the resources of such stretches of land as the Atacama desert or the islands off the Pacific coast of South America whence guano is shipped to all quarters of the globe.
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The new manures which have lately been so fashionable are of both kinds: guano is the dung of sea birds, which has been accumulating for ages on islands off the western coasts of Africa and South America; and nitrate of soda and Humphrey's compound are mineral substances which are very efficacious in promoting vegetation.
The Lady's Country Companion: or, How to Enjoy a Country Life Rationally Jane 1845
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The islands are covered in birg droppings (50 metres deep in some places) called guano which is apparently a good fertilizer.
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They carried coal from England to the East, guano from the Chincha Islands to England and France, petroleum from the Gulf Ports to Europe and South America and wool from Australia to England.
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At that time, bird droppings—called guano—were, alongside corpses, the most valuable fertilizer around.
The Fruit Hunters Adam Leith Gollner 2008
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At that time, bird droppings—called guano—were, alongside corpses, the most valuable fertilizer around.
The Fruit Hunters Adam Leith Gollner 2008
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At that time, bird droppings—called guano—were, alongside corpses, the most valuable fertilizer around.
The Fruit Hunters Adam Leith Gollner 2008
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Fritz Haber was a chemist who realized that there was soon going to be a crisis: the urgent need to find an artificial replacement for bird-droppings, aka guano fertilizer, on which Euro-food supplies depended.
American Connections James Burke 2007
john commented on the word guano
This is the name of my dingy--the U.S.S. Guano.
April 3, 2009
vanishedone commented on the word guano
Is dingy an American spelling of dinghy, is it a typo, or has a pun flown over my head? (The O.E.D. does list it as a known spelling of dinghy, along with dingee, dinghee and dingey.)
Edit: oh, now I see the list about misspellings...
April 4, 2009
seanahan commented on the word guano
I prefer dunghy, which is like a dinghy, but has a larger poopdeck.
April 4, 2009
bilby commented on the word guano
Heh :-)
April 4, 2009
john commented on the word guano
I think dingy was a freudian typo. The U.S.S. Guano is a sad, sad vessel. She's inflatable. She looks and handles like a large hot dog.
April 4, 2009
hernesheir commented on the word guano
"Guanoed her mind by reading French novels."
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield (1804-1881), Sybil, bk. ii, ch.9
September 20, 2009
bilby commented on the word guano
Yes, well, the library selection is a bit limited on Nauru.
September 20, 2009
hernesheir commented on the word guano
I would imagine library holdings would be minimal on a tiny potato-shaped tropical island. I'd while away my time searching for seabeans and beautiful shells on the lovely beaches...
I collect sea beans, a.k.a. tropical drift fruits and seeds and have contributed a substantial curated collection to a natural history museum I was once associated with....
September 20, 2009