adobe

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /əˈdəʊ.bi/
• (US) IPA^(key): /əˈdoʊ.bi/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -əʊbi

adobe (usually uncountable, plural adobes)

2. An unburnt brick dried in the sun.

   Synonyms: dobe, mudbrick

   Many people in Texas and New Mexico live in adobe houses.

   • 1903, O’Henry, Roads of Destiny:

     “Find me a nice, clean adobe wall,” says he, “and send Senor Rompiro up against it.”

   • 1904 November, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], Cabbages and Kings, New York, N.Y.: McClure, Phillips & Co., page 24:

     Stone sidewalks, little more than a ledge in width, ran along the base of the mean and monotonous adobe houses.

   • 1977, George Lucas, Star Wars (script)

     The Jawas mutter gibberish as they busily line up their battered captives, including Artoo and Threepio, in front of the enormous Sandcrawler, which is parked beside a small homestead consisting of three large holes in the ground surrounded by several tall moisture vaporators and one small adobe block house.

   • 26 May 2003, Roger Angell, in The New Yorker,

     The Sangre de Cristos came into view and the first soft-cornered adobe houses, and that night we ate at La Fonda with my Aunt Elsie, who worked for the Indian Bureau, and had Hopi snake dances and San Ildefonso pottery-makers and Mabel Dodge Luhan in store for us in the coming weeks.

4. The earth from which such bricks are made.
6. A house made of adobe brick.
   • 2007 March 11, Ralph Blumenthal, “Prosecutor’s Ouster Shifts Political Order”, in New York Times‎^[1]:

     The snow-dusted mesas and million-dollar adobes look enchanting as ever […] .

• Douglas Harper (2001–2026), “adobe”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.

• Baode, EABOD, abode, boaed

From Spanish adobe.

• IPA^(key): /ɑˈdoː.bə/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: ado‧be

adobe m (plural adobes, diminutive adobetje n)

1. adobe

Borrowed from Spanish adobe. Doublet of toub.

• IPA^(key): /a.dɔb/

• Audio (France (Somain)):

  (file)

adobe m (plural adobes)

1. adobe

• “adobe”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012

• IPA^(key): /aˈdɔbe/ [aˈð̞ɔ.β̞ɪ]
• Rhymes: -ɔbe
• Hyphenation: a‧do‧be

adobe m (plural adobes)

1. adobe (brick)
   • 1437, A. Rodríguez González (ed.), Livro do Concello de Pontevedra (1431-1463). Pontevedra: Museo de Pontevedra, page 132:

     pareçeu y presente Gonçalvo Fiel, moordomo da dita villa, e presentou ao dito juis, alcaldes, jurado e procuradores, a Gonçalvo de Carcaçia preso dos pees con huus adobes e hũa cadea grosa de ferro fechada con hũu cadeado

     there appeared Gonzalvo Fiel, butler of the aforementioned town, to present to the mentioned judge, councilors, juror, and council agent one Gonzalvo of Carcarcía, his feet fettered with some bricks and a thick iron chain which was locked with a padlock

2. clod, divot, clump of earth

   Synonyms: baloco, terrón

• Barreiro, Xavier Varela; Guinovart, Xavier Gómez (2006–2018), “adobe”, in Corpus Xelmírez: corpus lingüístico da Galicia medieval [Corpus Xelmírez: linguistic corpus of Medieval Galicia] (in Galician), Santiago de Compostela: Instituto da Lingua Galega
• Antón Luís Santamarina Fernández, editor (2006–2013), “adobe”, in Dicionario de Dicionarios da lingua galega [Dictionary of Dictionaries of the Galician language] (in Galician), Santiago de Compostela: Instituto da Lingua Galega
• Antón Luís Santamarina Fernández, Ernesto Xosé González Seoane, María Álvarez de la Granja, editors (2003–2018), “adobe”, in Tesouro informatizado da lingua galega (in Galician), Santiago de Compostela: Instituto da Lingua Galega
• Rosario Álvarez Blanco, editor (2014–2024), “adobe”, in Tesouro do léxico patrimonial galego e portugués (in Galician), Santiago de Compostela: Instituto da Lingua Galega, →ISSN

adobe

1. inflection of adobar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative

• a'dobe

Compare Twi Akan adobɛ (“a species of palm tree whose leaves, called Daha, are used to create roofing”).

• IPA^(key): /ʔa.do.bɛ/

adobe

1. a kind of grass (used for roofing)

• Lorenzo Dow Turner, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect (1969)

adobe

1. Rōmaji transcription of アドベ

• adobo

Borrowed from Arabic اَلطُّوب (aṭ-ṭūb).^[1][2]

• Hyphenation: a‧do‧be

adobe m (plural adobes)

1. adobe (unburnt brick)

• “adobe”, in Dicionário Aulete Digital (in Portuguese), Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon Editora Digital, 2008–2026

• IPA^(key): /aˈdobe/ [aˈð̞o.β̞e]

• Audio (Venezuela):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -obe
• Syllabification: a‧do‧be

adobe m (plural adobes)

1. (construction) adobe

• → Aragonese: adoba
• → Asturian: adobe
• → Basque: adobe
• → Dutch: adobe
• → English: adobe
• → Esperanto: adobo
• → French: adobe
• → Galician: adobe
• → Irish: adóib
• → Italian: adobe
• → Norwegian: adobe
• → Serbo-Croatian: adobe / адобе
• → Tagalog: adobe

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

adobe

1. inflection of adobar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative

• “adobe”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025

• adube

Borrowed from Spanish adobe, from Andalusian Arabic الظُّوْبْ (aḍ-ḍób), from Arabic اَلطُّوب (aṭ-ṭūb), from Sahidic Coptic ⲧⲱⲃⲉ (tōbe, “brick”), from Demotic Egyptian ⁠⁠ (tb, “brick”), from Egyptian

(ḏbt, “brick, block, ingot”).

• (Standard Tagalog) IPA^(key): /ʔaˈdobe/ [ʔɐˈd̪oː.bɛ]
• Rhymes: -obe
• Syllabification: a‧do‧be

adobe (Baybayin spelling ᜀᜇᜓᜊᜒ) (construction)

1. adobe (brick)
2. adobe stone; quarrystone

• “adobe”, in KWF Diksiyonaryo ng Wikang Filipino, Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino, 2025
• “adobe”, in Pambansang Diksiyonaryo | Diksiyonaryo.ph, 2018
• “adobe”, in Pinoy Dictionary, 2010–2026.
• Cuadrado Muñiz, Adolfo (1972), Hispanismos en el tagalo: diccionario de vocablos de origen español vigentes en esta lengua filipina, Madrid: Oficina de Educación Iberoamericana, page 12