silage

UK/ˈsaɪlɪd͡ʒ/US/ˈsaɪlɪd͡ʒ/

nounC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechleans written

Silage is green crop stored wet and left to ferment as winter feed. Cut the silage.

The fermentation preserves it without drying, which is what makes it possible in a wet climate. Silage smells strongly and keeps cattle fed through months when nothing grows.

Definitions of silage

1nounsilageGreen crop stored wet and left to ferment as winter feed.C1
“The silage was cut three times that summer.”

silage is a feed.

Where it comes from

An alteration of ensilage, from French ensiler, to put in a silo.

Spanish
ensilar
French
ensilage
English, today
silage

Built from

ensiler · French — put in a silo

Alteration (probably by influence of silo) of ensilage (1881), itself from French ensilage, from ensiler (“put in a silo”), from Spanish ensilar.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Farm & Countryside

Practise this word

silage in the wild

The fermentation and storage process is called ensilage, ensiling, or silaging.
Silage
Field corn is a North American term for maize (Zea mays) grown for livestock fodder (silage and meal), ethanol, cereal, and processed food products.
Field corn
Fodder includes hay, straw, silage, compressed and pelleted feeds, oils and mixed rations, and sprouted grains and legumes (such as bean sprouts, fresh malt, or spent malt).
Fodder
Silage is grass, corn or hay, which has been chopped into small pieces, and compacted together in a storage silo, silage bunker, or in silage bags.
Forage harvester
Haylage is a similar process to silage but using grass which has dried.
Forage harvester

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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