silt

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
silt/sɪlt/

▶noun

• 1 fine sand, clay, or other material carried by running water and deposited as a sediment.

• 2 technical sediment whose particles are between clay and sand in size (typically 0.002–0.06 mm).

▶verb fill or block or become filled or blocked with silt.

– derivatives
siltation noun,
silting noun,
silty adjective .

– origin ME: prob. orig. denoting a salty deposit and of Scand. origin, rel. to salt.