Calcareous

//kælˈkɛəɹi.əs// adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Resembling or containing calcium carbonate or limestone; chalky.

    "The traveller from the coast, who, after plodding northward for a score of miles over calcareous downs and corn-lands, suddenly reaches the verge of one of these escarpments[.]"

  2. 2
    Growing in a chalky habitat.
Adjective
  1. 1
    composed of or containing or resembling calcium carbonate or calcite or chalk wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
chalky

Example

More examples

"Decreases in carbonate ions can make building and maintaining shells and other calcium carbonate structures difficult for calcifying organisms such as oysters, clams, sea urchins, shallow water corals, deep sea corals, and calcareous plankton."

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin calcārius (“of or pertaining to lime”), derived from calx (“lime”). Similar to calcium.

Related phrases

calcareous spongecorneo-calcareouscalcium carbonate

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.