silon.

1835 C. F. Partington Brit. Cycl. Arts & Sci. II. 692/2 The grain put in his silos, in 1819, was sound and fresh in 1824.

1852 G. C. Mundy Our Antipodes I. iii. 113 The great curiosity of Cockatoo Island is the Siloes—excavations in the solid rock, shaped like a huge bottle, 15 or 20 feet deep by 10 wide, with a narrow neck, closed by a stone capsule luted with plaster.

1860 E. Domenech 7 Years' Resid. Deserts N. Amer. II. 278 Winter family provisions are also placed in silos like those of the Arabs.

1894 S. Baring-Gould Deserts S. France I. 245 There are receptacles for the manure cut in the floor, also silos for grain.

1881 Leeds Mercury 6 June 7 Storing green maize or rye in air and water-tight concreted pits or ‘silos’.

1885 Spectator 21 Feb. 249 Tares are very difficult to deal with in the silo.

1886 Stallmaier & Fux tr. Luther's Constr. & Equipm. of Grain Mags. 11 A silo is erected with outside walls, and sometimes covered with slates.

1893 Times 11 July 4/1 Coarse hop bines may be chopped while green and put into the silo.

1904 E. V. Wilcox & C. B. Smith Farmer's Cycl. Agric. 377/1 The first silos were simply pits dug in the ground... Since about 1875 silos of stone, brick and wood have come into use.

1948 Coast to Coast 1947 240 The silos stood up tall and straight, grey against the dazzling sky. A line of wheat-laden vehicles moved slowly up towards the hopper.

1950 Amer. Speech 25 165 Wherever it is possible to find ground that will be dry all seasons of the year, farmers build ‘pit silos’ and ‘trench silos’ rather than the cylindrical silos entirely aboveground.

1977 Daily Tel. 18 Mar. 8/3 The Norfolk agricultural engineering firm, Rowlands Engineers,..has started a three-shift system..to cope with export orders of more than £400,000 for grain, coffee and cocoa storage silos.

1889 M. S. van de Velde Cosmopolitan Recoll. II. ii. 44 Near the spot where Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the daughter of Gaston d'Orléans, held her little court, rise the new constructions for the storage of silo.

1898 F. P. Dunne Mr. Dooley in Peace & War 17 If they'd put blinders on th' mules, they wudden't be scared back be wan iv thim Spanish fleets that a jackass sees whin he's been up all night, secretly stuffing himsilf with silo.

1920 Glasgow Herald 2 Sept. 3/8 The coal silos are of sufficient capacity to maintain the supply for about 20 hours in the event of the stoppage of the conveyors.

1958 Times Rev. Industry May 64/3 Sulphur will be imported at wharves nearby and stored in a concrete silo with a capacity of 5,000 tons.

1961 Engineering 9 June 794 Cement now comes in tankers and is stored in silos.

1973 Daily Tel. 25 July 2/3 Another [boy]..was trapped up to his waist in a cement silo for nearly three hours.

1958 N.Y. Times 15 June 24/4 The system will be protected against neutralization in an enemy attack because the missiles will be installed in concrete-lined underground silos.

1960 Aeroplane XLIX. 18/1 For these ‘silo’ squadrons each missile will be emplaced vertically in a reinforced concrete-lined hole, 52 ft. in diameter and about 175 ft. deep. An elevator raises the missile to the surface a few minutes before launching.

1962 Engineering 5 Jan. 13 The Atlas-F [rocket] variant is to be housed within a ‘silo’ 174 feet deep and 52 feet in diameter... The first silos for Atlas-F are already under construction.

1968 Economist 31 Aug. 14/1 On present plans Minuteman III is scheduled gradually to replace Minuteman I and Minuteman II in the silos that dot the prairies and mountains of the western United States.

1975 ‘A. Hall’ Mandarin Cypher xiii. 196 The Chinese Republic had silos all over the mainland for reaction–take-off missiles.

1978 Daily Tel. 27 July 1/2 Loading the Revenge's 16 ballistic missiles from their hillside silos at Coulport started..yesterday.

1977 Time 3 Oct. 22/3 The U.S. has also become increasingly concerned..about existing rockets that may become ‘silo busters’, with the explosive force and pin~point accuracy to destroy U.S. missiles in their underground launchers.

1970 Nature 3 Oct. 11/1 The smaller but more accurate multiple warheads..are, like the SS-9, silo-busting weapons.

1883 Standard 5 Dec. 2/3 The cost of siloing grass..was eleven shillings.

1884 Pall Mall Gaz. 17 Sept. 3/2 His crop, which was siloed yesterday in Cheshire, only yielded 18 tons per acre.