i Register
In some senses, clayey is marked as figuratively. Watch for register when choosing this word.
adj
Composed of clay or containing (much) clay; clayish.
The shores of the rivers and creeks are chiefly planted with coffee, to the distance of about 30 miles from the sea; thence 30 miles farther up, the soil becomes clayey and more fit for sugar[-]canes.
She had walked over rotted, decaying, splintered planks covered with clayey soil: […]
Covered or dirtied with clay.
Wheat-fields, one would think, cannot come to grow untilled; no man made clayey, or made weary thereby;—unless machinery will do it?
Resembling clay; claylike, clayish.
Death, grim Death, will fold / Me, in his leaden Arms, and preſs me cloſe / To his cold clayie Breaſt: […]
Of the human body, as contrasted with the soul; bodily, human, mortal.
This purifing of wit, this enritching of memory, enabling of iudgment, and enlarging of conceyt, which commonly we call learning, […] the final end is, to lead and draw vs to as high a perfection, as our degenerate ſoules made worſe by their clayey lodgings, can be capable of.
[A]mid these tombs, / Cold as their clayey tenants, know, my heart / Must never grow to stone!