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Cloaca   Listen
noun
Cloaca  n.  (pl. cloacae)  
1.
A sewer; as, the Cloaca Maxima of Rome.
2.
A privy.
3.
(Anat.) The common chamber into which the intestinal, urinary, and generative canals discharge in birds, reptiles, amphibians, and many fishes.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cloaca" Quotes from Famous Books



... reaction. The artificial manure known as "superphosphate of lime" consists of this salt and calcium sulphate, and is obtained by treating ground bones, coprolites, &c., with sulphuric acid. The di-calcium salt, Ca2H2(PO4)2, occurs in a concretionary form in the ureters and cloaca of the sturgeon, and also in guano. It is obtained as rhombic plates by mixing dilute solutions of calcium chloride and sodium phosphate, and passing carbon dioxide into the liquid. Other phosphates ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... chain, a sceptre topped with an eagle, and a crimson robe studded with gold—emblems of royalty. But he is best known for various public works of great magnificence at the time, as well as of public utility. Among these was the Cloaca Maxima, to drain the marshy land between the Palatine and the Tiber—a work so great, that Niebuhr ranks it with the pyramids. It has lasted, without the displacement of a stone, for more than two thousand years. It shows that the use of the arch was known at that period. The masonry of the ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... Building that held the tide of the streets within its grip, alternately drawing it in and throwing it forth. Within there, a great whirlpool, a pit of roaring waters spun and thundered, sucking in the life tides of the city, sucking them in as into the mouth of some tremendous cloaca, the maw of some colossal sewer; then vomiting them forth again, spewing them up and out, only to catch them in the return eddy ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... this rubbish on the edge of the hole, arranging it so as to form a circular rampart. Soon the posterior members can take nothing more from the too distant bottom. The moment for laying has now come. As soon as the egg arrives at the cloaca one of the feet seizes it and lowers it gently into the nest, while the second foot seizes another egg, which during this time had appeared at the orifice. This manipulation lasts until the end of the operation, when ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... with Sextus' slave in the Cloaca Maxima, the great sewer of Rome," said Marcia. "Not that I need the list. I know what names are written on it. But if it should have fallen ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy

... that we should attribute the decoration of the arches of St. Mark's with scriptural mosaics to a religious sentiment; but it would be a strange absurdity to regard as an effort of piety the invention of the form of the arch itself, of which one of the earliest and most perfect instances is in the Cloaca Maxima. And thus in the case of spires and towers, it is just to ascribe to the devotion of their designers that dignity which was bestowed upon forms derived from the simplest domestic buildings; but it is ridiculous to attribute any great refinement of religious feeling, or height of religious ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin

... inexhaustible; he has nothing under the sun to do. Have you, Rowland? If you had seen the big hole I have been making in it! Where will you go first? You have your choice—from the Scala Santa to the Cloaca Maxima." ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... has stood thereon in the sunset, and looked from the dome of St. Peter's to the islands projected at that hour so distinctly from the river's surface, glanced along the flushed dwellings upon its bank, with their intervals of green terraces, or gazed, in the other direction, upon the Cloaca of Tarquin, Vesta's dome, and the Aventine Hill, with its palaces, convents, vineyards, and gardens, has not felt that the Ponte Rotto was the most suggestive servatory in the Eternal City? The Ponte Molle brings back Constantine ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... CLOACA MAXIMA, or great sewer intended to drain the Campagna, is also said to have been constructed. This sewer was so well built ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell

... rare. From their construction, they appear fitted only to grope among the rocks at the bottom of the ocean. Their mode of progression is backward, by the forcible ejection of a jet of water from an orifice in the neck, beside the rectum or cloaca. Consequently their normal position is head-downward, and with tentacles spread out like the ribs of an umbrella—eight of them at least; the two long ones, like the antennae of an insect, rove unceasingly around, ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen



Words linked to "Cloaca" :   bodily cavity, cavity, sewer, drain, zoology, drainpipe, zoological science, sewage system, sewerage, cavum



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