camalote

English

Etymology

From Spanish camalote, from Classical Nahuatl camalotl.

Noun

camalote (plural camalotes)

  1. A floating island composed of Pontederia plants.
    • 1848, Lauchlan Bellingham Mackinnon, Steam Warfare in the Parana: A Narrative of Operations, by the Combined Squadrons of England and France, in Forcing a Passage Up that River, page 285:
      About ten A.M. another camalote of very large size, apparently two acres in extent, floated into the midst of us. […] There islands are sometimes very compact, and capable of sustaining a considerable weight. There is a well-authenticated story of two tigers being drifted down upon a camalote as far as Monte Video, where the beasts created great alam.
    • 1974, Loren Scott Patterson, The War of the Triple Alliance: Paraguayan Offensive Phase - a Military History:
      A camalote is a floating island of river plants often with enough root structure to support one or more men. Later in the war, the Paraguayans camou- flaged canoes as camalotes so as to approach the Brazilian fleet undetected.
    • 1998, International Association of Theoretical and Applied Limnology, Proceedings:
      […] a camalote, a floating island composed of pleustonic vegetation. Sampling was from a boat. At each sample site, five plants at the periphery of the stand were vigorously shaken in a 200 μm mesh-width handnet partially immersed in […]

Spanish

Etymology

Borrowed from Classical Nahuatl camalotl.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /kamaˈlote/ [ka.maˈlo.t̪e]
  • Rhymes: -ote
  • Syllabification: ca‧ma‧lo‧te

Noun

camalote m (plural camalotes)

  1. Pontederia crassipes (a tropical aquatic plant from South America, in the family Pontederiaceae, that appears to form floating islands)

Further reading

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.