Word.ws English Dictionary

night soil

night soil noun: human faeces; especially, such waste as has recently been added to an outhouse or dry closet and will need removal.

Noun

night soil (uncountable)

  1. (archaic, euphemistic) Human faeces; especially, such waste as has recently been added to an outhouse or dry closet and will need removal.
    • There, the night soil along with the community refuse is filled in trenches for composting and subsequent use in agriculture.1977, Hillel I. Shuval, Water Renovation and Reuse, →ISBN
    • The flow of nitrogen from night-soil in rural China is valuable, whereas human excrement in an urban center is a pollution problem.2006, Mario Giampietro et al., “Can Biofuels replace Fossil Energy Fuels?”, in International Journal of Transdisciplinary Research, volume 1, number 1, page 58

night soil meaning in Tamil and Urdu

night soil in Tamil

மல எரு, நரகல், மலக்கழிவு, மலம்

night soil in Urdu

فضلہ, غلاظت

Forms of night soil

alternative formnight-soil
alternative formnightsoil

Origin of night soil

At least notionally because such soil was removed at night by nightmen, and because chamberpots were needed especially at night (when one, in one's nightgown, might be less disposed to leave the house for the outhouse); but the general taboo around human excrement encourages euphemism, and any word in the allusive range of the night–dark–black–bad archetypes might serve as well as another for the purpose; thus, compare blackwater.

Words formed from night soil

Questions about night soil

What does night soil mean?
Night soil means human faeces; especially, such waste as has recently been added to an outhouse or dry closet and will need removal.
What is night soil in Tamil?
Night soil in Tamil is மல எரு, நரகல், மலக்கழிவு. See Night soil meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is night soil?
Night soil is a noun.

Words near night soil in the dictionary

  1. night shining cloud
  2. night skies
  3. night sky
  4. night snake
  5. night snakes
  6. night soil
  7. night soil man
  8. night soil men
  9. night spot
  10. night spots
  11. night stand

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: night soil (page history and authors); night soil (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); night soil (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “night soil.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/night_soil. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.