Definition: 1: a glazed or unglazed fired clay used especially for statuettes and vases and architectural purposes (as roofing, facing, and relief ornamentation); also : something made of this material. 2: a brownish orange

Quotation: “They rode on through sandstone cities in the dusk of that day, past castle and keep and windfashioned watchtower and stone granaries in sun and in shadow. The rode through marl and terracotta and rifts of copper shale and they rode through a wooded swag and out upon a promontory overlooking a bleak and barren caldera where lay the abandoned ruins of Santa Rita del Cobre.”

Blood Meridian is full of strange and intriguing words and partly the motivation for starting word of the day. Terracotta was one that also happened to appear in a Saturday NYTimes crossword puzzle, so I was doubly interested to get the full meaning. It translates literally as “baked earth” from Italian.