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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

silt.

Mud or fine earth deposited from running or standing water.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/sɪlt/
  1. Mud or fine earth deposited from running or standing water.

    uncountable
  2. Any material with similar physical characteristics, regardless of its origins or transport.

    broadly · uncountable
  3. A particle from 3.9 to 62.5 microns in diameter, following the Wentworth scale.

    countable
Where this word comes from

PIE word *sḗh₂l From Middle English silte, cilte, cylte, perhaps from Middle English silen ("to filter; strain"; equivalent to sile + -t), or cognate with Norwegian and Danish sylt (“salt marsh”), Middle Low German sulte (“salt-marsh”), German Sülze (“meat in aspic”), ultimately from Proto-Germanic *sultijō (“salty water; brine”). Related to Old English sealt (“salt”).

verb/sɪlt/
  1. To clog or fill with silt.

    transitive
  2. To become clogged with silt.

    intransitive
  3. To flow through crevices; to percolate.

    ambitransitive
Where this word comes from

PIE word *sḗh₂l From Middle English silte, cilte, cylte, perhaps from Middle English silen ("to filter; strain"; equivalent to sile + -t), or cognate with Norwegian and Danish sylt (“salt marsh”), Middle Low German sulte (“salt-marsh”), German Sülze (“meat in aspic”), ultimately from Proto-Germanic *sultijō (“salty water; brine”). Related to Old English sealt (“salt”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.