Adobe (redirected from Adobes)

adobe (ədō`bē): see rammed earth.

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adobe

Handmade sun-dried bricks formed from a mixture of heavy clay and straw found in arid regions. As a building material, adobe dates back thousands of years and is found in many parts of the world. Molds for shaping the bricks were brought to the New World by the Spanish. Excellent insulating properties make adobe an ideal material for both dwellings and ovens; home interiors retain heat in winter and stay cool in summer. The adobe buildings at Taos, N.M., are typical of Native American pueblo dwellings.

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Adobe

(Adobe Systems, Inc., San Jose, CA, www.adobe.com) The leading multimedia and desktop publishing software company. Founded in 1982 by Dr. John Warnock, Adobe helped pioneer the desktop publishing industry with its PostScript fonts. Initially developed for the Mac, PostScript became the standard among graphics and printing service bureaus. Adobe's PhotoShop image editor and Illustrator drawing program also spearheaded the industry. With its 1995 acquisitions of PageMaker and FrameMaker, Adobe became a leader in desktop publishing software. In 2005, Adobe acquired Macromedia, adding even more quality Web development and multimedia applications to the product line (see Macromedia).

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adobe [ə′dō·bē]

(geology)

Heavy-textured clay soil found in the southwestern United States and in Mexico.

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adobe

A heavy soil, composed largely of clay and silt in sufficient quantities to form a matrix in which sand particles are firmly imbedded; water is added, and straw, manure, and fragments of tile are sometimes combined with this mixture to provide increased mechanical strength and cohesion when it dries. It can be used as a plaster or be formed into bricks, often shaped by hand in a wooden form, then sun-dried; widely used in Spanish Colonial architecture and its derivatives. Adobe brick walls are often lime-plastered to improve resistance to weather; a coating such as slaked lime acts as a stabilizing agent.

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Adobe 

an unfired brick made of clay mixed with cut straw or other fibrous materials, such as tow or chaff. One of the most ancient building materials, adobe was widely used in unforested areas; for example, it was used in building the dwellings of Merimde-Benisalame in the Nile Delta in the fifth and fourth millennia B.C. and the defensive wall of Troy II on the coast of Asia Minor in the middle of the third millennium B.C. Adobe is currently used primarily in Asian countries in the construction of low structures.