Other forms: composting, composted, composts
Compost is kitchen and garden scraps rotted down into rich food for the soil. A compost heap, make compost, well-rotted compost.
The heap needs a mix of green material and brown, some air and some water, and it heats up as bacteria work — a hot heap can reach sixty degrees and kills weed seeds. It takes months. Compost is also the bagged growing medium sold for pots, which is a different thing under the same name. Note compostable, which is a legal term for packaging and does not mean it will rot in a garden heap.
1nouncompostRotted plant material used to enrich soil.
“She dug a bucket of compost into the vegetable bed before planting.”
2verbrotTo rot material down for that purpose.
“We compost our fruit and vegetable peelings in a bin at the bottom of the garden.”
compost is rotted organic matter.
Old French compost comes from Latin compositus, put together, from componere. Compote and composite are the same word, so compost is literally a mixture.
Latin
compositus — composed
fro-nor
compost — a mixture of leaves, manure, etc., for fertilizing land, also a condiment
Middle English
compost
English, today
compost
From Middle English compost, from fro-nor compost (“a mixture of leaves, manure, etc., for fertilizing land, also a condiment”), from Latin compositus (“composed”), from componere. a doublet of compote, which was taken from modern French, composite, and kompot.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA