> as lemmas

OE Old Eng. Hexateuch: Gen. (Claud.) xli. 2 Hi [sc. oxan] man læsude on morigum lande.

a1387 J. Trevisa tr. R. Higden Polychron. (St. John's Cambr.) (1872) IV. 157 Herdes fond hym among mory flagges and sprayes.

c1500 (a1449) J. Lydgate Isopes Fabules (Trin. Cambr.) 475 in Minor Poems (1934) ii. 582 (MED) The frosshe delyteþ to abyde in mory lakys.

1577 B. Googe tr. C. Heresbach Foure Bks. Husbandry i. f. 31^v It delighteth in a watrishe moorie grounde.

1612 M. Drayton Poly-olbion ix. 143 Guint, forth along with her Lewenny that doth draw; And next to them againe, the fat and moory Frawe.

1667 J. Milton Paradise Lost ii. 944 As when a Gryfon through the Wilderness With winged course ore Hill or moarie Dale, Pursues the Arimaspian [etc.] . View more context for this quotation

1731 P. Miller Gardeners Dict. I. at Lupulus The Essex Planters account a moory Land the properest for Hops.

1749 W. Ellis Compl. Syst. Improvem. Sheep iii. v. 321 They conceive [moor-evil]..is bred in a Sheep or Lamb, by its lying on moory, cold Ground.

1778 Farmer's Mag. June 210 What Manure..do you find most serviceable, on the following soils respectively, viz...Gravelly, Moory, Cold and Wet?

1792 J. Byng Diary 1 June in Torrington Diaries (1936) III. 24 Leaving R., I soon came upon moory ground, which is now generally enclosed, some very lately.

1805 R. W. Dickson Pract. Agric. II. 853 On peaty or moory lands marl and other similar materials will be of advantage in rendering them more compact.

1819 Amer. Farmer 4 June 76 A composition of one half good loamy earth, one fourth sand, and one fourth light moory earth, well incorporated together.

1877 S. B. J. Skertchly Geol. of Fenland 130 [In Lincolnshire] It is usual to speak of ‘moory land’, ‘black land’, or ‘fen’ where the soil is peaty.

1938 Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.) B. 229 326 Cultivation is said to have ceased when the upper black peat had been destroyed and the plough had reached the red ‘moory’ layer, which can safely be presumed to have been acidic Sphagnum peat.

1957 Amer. Midland Naturalist 57 287 In boggy depressions of sand plains..we find a sandy-bog variation of the Mylia-Cladopodiella Associule. Under such sandy-moory conditions, Lophozia capitata..totally replaces L. marchica.