Kieselguhr

//ˈkiːzəlɡʊə// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Diatomaceous earth, a kind of soft rock containing the remains of diatoms; it absorbs nitroglycerine and is used to manufacture dynamite. countable, uncountable

    "It was the only name anybody seemed to know him by, “Kieselguhr” being a kind of fine clay, used to soak up nitroglycerine and stabilize it into dynamite."

  2. 2
    a light soil consisting of siliceous diatom remains and often used as a filtering material wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
diatomaceous earthdiatomaceous earthdiatomite

Example

More examples

"It was the only name anybody seemed to know him by, “Kieselguhr” being a kind of fine clay, used to soak up nitroglycerine and stabilize it into dynamite."

Etymology

Borrowed from German Kieselguhr, older spelling of Kieselgur, from Kiesel (“pebble, gravel”) + Gur (“guhr”).

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