How to Use silt in a Sentence

silt

1 of 2 noun
  • This ocean canyon heaves waves of shale and basalt, quartz and silt.
    — Literary Hub, 18 Mar. 2026
  • Ayad found nothing but smooth red silt where her house had been.
    — Kareem Fahim, Washington Post, 14 Sep. 2023
  • So far, dredgers have tried to clear silt around the massive ship.
    — Jon Gambrell and Samy Magdy, chicagotribune.com, 25 Mar. 2021
  • The once-hunter green beauty was now an ashen hue from all the silt.
    — Eileen Kelley, Sun Sentinel, 24 May 2022
  • In Phoenix's canal system, clam beds form where silt builds up.
    — The Arizona Republic, 9 Aug. 2023
  • The true magic may lie in the soil, which is rich with river silt.
    — Sunset Magazine, 21 Mar. 2022
  • Two of the dam’s three outlets for stormwater are blocked with silt.
    — Ian Jamesstaff Writer, Los Angeles Times, 26 Jan. 2023
  • Then, as the tide goes out, the silt settles on the ship structures.
    — Andrea Tamayo, Scientific American, 25 Sep. 2025
  • The sun sank back into the clouds, like a white stone falling through silt.
    — Robert Moor, New Yorker, 2 Mar. 2026
  • But after weeks of staring at bare ground, a few green shoots pushed through the dark silt.
    — Lila Hempel-Edgers, Charlotte Observer, 2 Sep. 2025
  • Particles of silt and any rust from your plumbing join in.
    — Brandee Gruener, Southern Living, 2 Nov. 2025
  • When high tides arrive, water brings silt into the bay.
    — Andrea Tamayo, Scientific American, 25 Sep. 2025
  • Make sure mushrooms are clean of any dirt, silt, or other debris.
    — Beth Segal, cleveland, 1 Oct. 2021
  • Rainy days turn the sand and dust on Nome’s streets into a thin grayish silt.
    — Ian Frazier, New Yorker, 19 Jan. 2026
  • The best topsoil is loose and loamy, consisting of equal amounts of sand, silt, and clay.
    — Brandee Gruener, Southern Living, 19 Apr. 2026
  • But in this case, a layer of silt may have protected the ship from oxygen.
    — Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 10 Jan. 2023
  • The floods left behind a thick layer of rich silt, ideal for farming.
    — Tim McDonnell, Quartz, 27 Oct. 2022
  • After the lakebed dries out, contractors will be able to move the silt at the bottom.
    — Victoria Moorwood, The Enquirer, 1 Apr. 2024
  • The groups say runoff from the mine would cloud the water and fill the turtles’ rocky habitat with mud and silt.
    — Dennis Pillion | [email protected], al, 23 June 2021
  • An army of college servants swept river silt from the courtyards.
    — Literary Hub, 26 Feb. 2026
  • Any parts of the hull that weren't quickly buried by silt have long since decomposed in the water.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 3 Feb. 2022
  • As the reservoir has shrunk, this silt, exposed to the sun, has formed what can best be described as mud glaciers.
    — Wade Davis, Rolling Stone, 3 Sep. 2023
  • To collect one ounce of gold, the miners must sift through nearly 30 tons of silt.
    — Kevin Monahan, NBC news, 26 Sep. 2022
  • The ratio of sand, silt, and clay determines the soil's texture.
    — Rae Ford, Martha Stewart, 8 June 2026
  • The silt covered and killed marine plants and bottom-dwelling creatures.
    — Phil Diehl, San Diego Union-Tribune, 23 Mar. 2024
  • Both winds drive silt into the house and are responsible for the area’s rich topsoil.
    — Nancy Lord, Anchorage Daily News, 26 June 2021
  • The process stirs up silt and drags sand around, creating new shallow areas and sandbars.
    — Maggie Andresen, Scientific American, 17 Dec. 2021
  • In between the two in size is silt, a mix of rock dust and minerals often found in fertile flood plains.
    — Brian Darby, Discover Magazine, 29 Mar. 2024
  • The entire story of the Grand Canyon is one of wind, water, silt, and sand.
    — Wade Davis, Rolling Stone, 3 Sep. 2023
  • This process results in the different amounts of sand, clay and silt, three of the components of soil.
    — Mary Berube, San Diego Union-Tribune, 12 Nov. 2022

silt

2 of 2 verb
  • The entrance to the creek had silted shut.
  • Faison finishes shaking; pale flecks of shell and silt float around him.
    — Emily Cataneo, Smithsonian Magazine, 12 Aug. 2022
  • But neither removes the desert of sand that still silts up the wheels of Indian commerce.
    — The Economist, 17 Aug. 2019
  • Malacca’s port, once one of the richest on earth, silted up, and the city became a historical footnote.
    — Hannah Beech, New York Times, 11 Apr. 2020
  • And once that soil was gone, it was gone for good, silting up the seabed and exposing the old bony rock beneath Europe’s soft topside.
    — Bella Bathurst, Newsweek, 29 May 2014
  • But the estuary, which had been silting up since the 11th century, had different ideas.
    — Rob Crossan, Condé Nast Traveler, 24 Mar. 2026
  • In the end, the studies showed that changes in the tide dynamics would be detrimental to the environment — and that the barrages would silt up very quickly.
    — Nancy Lord, Alaska Dispatch News, 12 Aug. 2017
  • Then there is the fact that the Bridgeport Harbor hasn’t been dredged since 1964 and some of its channels have silted in.
    — WSJ, 2 Feb. 2020
  • The rock was originally silt on the seafloor that, it's argued, hosted early microbial life that was buried by more silt, leaving the carbon as their remains.
    — Howard Lee, ArsTechnica, 11 Aug. 2025
  • But in the 1860s, gold mining and timbering had begun to silt up the high mountain spawning beds, covering and suffocating their eggs.
    — Patrick Symmes, Harper's magazine, 28 Oct. 2019
  • Deep sea mining works by having vehicles on the ocean floor dig directly into the seabed, and this process releases silt, clay, and other sediments that are immediately carried away by the flow of water.
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 13 July 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'silt.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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