Meaning & use
night soil
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Human excrement collected, historically at night, from latrines and cesspits for disposal or use as fertilizer.
See it in a sentence
Before modern sewage systems, workers collected night soil from city households and carted it away before dawn.
Farmers once relied on night soil to fertilize fields near densely populated towns.
A note on using this word
The euphemistic term reflects the fact that collection was traditionally done under cover of darkness, before public sanitation systems existed.
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