tepetate

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Spanish tepetate.

Noun

tepetate (plural tepetates)

1. (geology) A soil type found in volcanic regions, known for hardness, poor drainage, and poor fertility.
   • 1990, Gene C. Wilken, Good Farmers: Traditional Agricultural Resource Management in Mexico and Central America‎^[1]:

     Where erosion has reduced the soil layer to less than planting depth or to exposed tepetate, farmers may break up and pulverize the tepetate with plows, picks, crowbars, sledgehammers, or even black powder, to form a usable soil layer.

   • 2002, Nico van Breemen, Soil Formation‎^[2], page 337:

     Alternating dry and wet periods may favour crystallisation of amorphous aluminium silicates to phyllosilicate clays, so that many tepetates have clay coatings that are due to recrystallisation rather than to clay illuviation (see also Chapter 12).

   • 2006, Rattan Lal, Encyclopedia of Soil Science‎^[3], volume 2, page 1745:

     Tepetate is a vernacular Mexican term referring to a hardened land with various degrees of infertility. Tepetates are derived from volcanic material, mainly tuff. The scientific definition reserves the term tepetate for a hardened layer in soils formed from pyroclastic materials. In the Central Valley of Mexico these indurate layers are among the most striking geological features.

Translations

soil type

• Spanish: tepetate (es) m, talpetate m, duripan m, hardpán (es) m, cangagua (es) f, moromoro (es) m

Further reading

• tepetate on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Spanish

Alternative forms

• talpetate

Etymology

Borrowed from Classical Nahuatl tepetlatl.

Noun

tepetate m (plural tepetates)

1. (geology) tepetate

   Synonyms: duripan, (Argentina, Colombia, Peru) hardpán, (Ecuador, Peru, Chile) cangagua, (Chile) moromoro

Further reading

• “tepetate”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2024 December 10