See night soil on Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "At least notionally because such soil was removed at night by nightmen, and because chamberpots were needed especially at night (when one, in one's nightgown, might be less disposed to leave the house for the outhouse); but the general taboo around human excrement encourages euphemism, and any word in the allusive range of the night–dark–black–bad archetypes might serve as well as another for the purpose; thus, compare blackwater.",
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "-"
},
"expansion": "night soil (uncountable)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English euphemisms",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Entries with translation boxes",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Mandarin terms with redundant transliterations",
"parents": [
"Terms with redundant transliterations",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Terms with Cantonese translations",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Terms with Finnish translations",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Terms with Mandarin translations",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Terms with Russian translations",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1977, Hillel I. Shuval, Water Renovation and Reuse, →ISBN:",
"text": "There, the night soil along with the community refuse is filled in trenches for composting and subsequent use in agriculture.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2006, Mario Giampietro et al., “Can Biofuels replace Fossil Energy Fuels?”, in International Journal of Transdisciplinary Research, volume 1, number 1, page 58:",
"text": "The flow of nitrogen from night-soil in rural China is valuable, whereas human excrement in an urban center is a pollution problem.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2017, Jennifer Taylor, Echoes of the Moon, →ISBN:",
"text": "Time for the local night soil man to appear. He left the inn to find the night man who serviced the place.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Human faeces."
],
"id": "en-night_soil-en-noun-hhHlW5EN",
"links": [
[
"faeces",
"faeces"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(archaic, euphemistic) Human faeces."
],
"related": [
{
"word": "nightman"
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "night-soil"
},
{
"word": "nightsoil"
}
],
"tags": [
"archaic",
"euphemistic",
"uncountable"
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "yue",
"lang": "Chinese Cantonese",
"roman": "je⁶ hoeng¹",
"sense": "human faeces",
"word": "夜香"
},
{
"code": "yue",
"lang": "Chinese Cantonese",
"roman": "je⁶ loi⁴ hoeng¹",
"sense": "human faeces",
"word": "夜來香 /夜来香"
},
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"roman": "fènbiàn",
"sense": "human faeces",
"word": "糞便 /粪便"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "human faeces",
"word": "uloste"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "nočnóje zóloto",
"sense": "human faeces",
"tags": [
"neuter"
],
"word": "ночно́е зо́лото"
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"night soil"
]
}
],
"word": "night soil"
}
{
"etymology_text": "At least notionally because such soil was removed at night by nightmen, and because chamberpots were needed especially at night (when one, in one's nightgown, might be less disposed to leave the house for the outhouse); but the general taboo around human excrement encourages euphemism, and any word in the allusive range of the night–dark–black–bad archetypes might serve as well as another for the purpose; thus, compare blackwater.",
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "-"
},
"expansion": "night soil (uncountable)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"related": [
{
"word": "nightman"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English euphemisms",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns",
"English terms with archaic senses",
"English terms with quotations",
"English uncountable nouns",
"Entries with translation boxes",
"Mandarin terms with redundant transliterations",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries",
"Terms with Cantonese translations",
"Terms with Finnish translations",
"Terms with Mandarin translations",
"Terms with Russian translations"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1977, Hillel I. Shuval, Water Renovation and Reuse, →ISBN:",
"text": "There, the night soil along with the community refuse is filled in trenches for composting and subsequent use in agriculture.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2006, Mario Giampietro et al., “Can Biofuels replace Fossil Energy Fuels?”, in International Journal of Transdisciplinary Research, volume 1, number 1, page 58:",
"text": "The flow of nitrogen from night-soil in rural China is valuable, whereas human excrement in an urban center is a pollution problem.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2017, Jennifer Taylor, Echoes of the Moon, →ISBN:",
"text": "Time for the local night soil man to appear. He left the inn to find the night man who serviced the place.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Human faeces."
],
"links": [
[
"faeces",
"faeces"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(archaic, euphemistic) Human faeces."
],
"tags": [
"archaic",
"euphemistic",
"uncountable"
],
"wikipedia": [
"night soil"
]
}
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "night-soil"
},
{
"word": "nightsoil"
}
],
"translations": [
{
"code": "yue",
"lang": "Chinese Cantonese",
"roman": "je⁶ hoeng¹",
"sense": "human faeces",
"word": "夜香"
},
{
"code": "yue",
"lang": "Chinese Cantonese",
"roman": "je⁶ loi⁴ hoeng¹",
"sense": "human faeces",
"word": "夜來香 /夜来香"
},
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"roman": "fènbiàn",
"sense": "human faeces",
"word": "糞便 /粪便"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "human faeces",
"word": "uloste"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "nočnóje zóloto",
"sense": "human faeces",
"tags": [
"neuter"
],
"word": "ночно́е зо́лото"
}
],
"word": "night soil"
}
Download raw JSONL data for night soil meaning in All languages combined (2.8kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-01-15 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-01-01 using wiktextract (b941637 and 4230888). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.