ordure

noun

or·​dure ˈȯr-jər 

1

: excrement

2

: something that is morally degrading

Synonyms

• dung
• soil
• dirt

Examples of ordure in a Sentence

polite people do not discuss ordure in public

Recent Examples on the Web

The script was based on the 1979 French play and subsequent 1982 film Le père Noël est une ordure (Santa Claus Is a Stinker). —Glenn Garner, Deadline, 21 Dec. 2024

On the face of it, packing the ordure of millions into open-air mounds is a terrible approach to a more livable planet, particularly in a part of the world where scavengers don’t comb through them for every salable scrap. —Curbed, 12 Aug. 2022

Even a seemingly natural savannah, the African grasslands in the Mara-Serengeti, has benefited from the healing powers of animal ordure, produced by the livestock of human herders thousands of years ago. —Bill Andrews, Discover Magazine, 29 Aug. 2018

My group first watched a video, which explained that the plant’s effluent would be released into the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, a thirty-mile-long waterway built in the late nineteenth century to rid the city of its ordure. —Elizabeth Kolbert, The New York Review of Books, 9 Feb. 2022

Poking at the ordure with a stick, Cipollone pointed out the beech mast and berries on which the bear had fed. —Christopher Preston, The Atlantic, 9 Apr. 2020

President Nicolás Manuro: Creating ordure out of chaos. —Washington Post, 9 Aug. 2019

In gardens, the scent of frangipani carries on the damp breeze; in cities, that unmistakably Indian blend of ordure, asphalt and spice. —The Economist, 27 June 2019

At the bottom of the tube sat a half-inch of what looked like frozen mud, but was, in fact, orca ordure. —Kate Brooks, Smithsonian, 30 Sep. 2017

Word History

Etymology

Middle English, from Anglo-French, from ord dirty, foul, from Latin horridus horrid

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for ordure

• boarder
• border
• corder
• order
• warder
• camcorder
• disorder
• recorder
• reorder
• suborder
• transborder