boulder clay


nounGeology.
  1. a glacial deposit consisting chiefly of unstratified clay with embedded boulders.

Origin of boulder clay

1
First recorded in 1855–60

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use boulder clay in a sentence

  • The U-shaped character of the valleys was very pronounced, while boulder-clay obtruded itself everywhere on our notice.

    The Home of the Blizzard | Douglas Mawson
  • That there might be several deposits of the boulder-clay with intervening strata, does not appear to have been suggested.

    Prehistoric Man | W. L. H. Duckworth
  • (B) The ‘sub-boulder-clay’ skeleton, discovered near Ipswich in 1911, was in an extraordinarily contracted attitude.

    Prehistoric Man | W. L. H. Duckworth
  • The boulder clay of Germany is supposed to have accumulated underneath this vast "mer de glace," as he calls it.

  • The deposits immediately preceding the Forest-Bed would also be contemporaneous with the lower continental boulder clay.

British Dictionary definitions for boulder clay

boulder clay

noun
  1. an unstratified glacial deposit consisting of fine clay, boulders, and pebbles: See also till 4

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012