DictionaryRoot: adobe
Spanish

adobe

sun-dried, unburnt brick

1 / 1
A close view of straw-flecked earthen bricks drying outdoors in direct sunlight, with one dry brick prominently displaying its clay-and-straw composition and a wooden brick mold beside a damp newly shaped brick.
noun / adjective

adobe

uh-DOH-bee/əˈdəʊbi/

Sun-dried earth formed into building bricks.

Etymology

Spanish adobe already named an unburnt brick dried in the sun, so the building-material meaning is inherited. Its deeper origin is disputed: the source reports both an Arabic “brick” ancestry and a connection with “daub, plaster.”

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