adobe
1. A sun-dried, unburned brick of clay and straw.
a. The clay or soil from which this brick is made.
2, A structure built with this type of brick.
[Spanish, from Arabic aṭ-ṭūba, the brick : al-, the + ṭūba, a brick, singulative of ṭūb, bricks (from Coptic tōbe, tōōbefrom Egyptian dbt, brick).]

These bricks are very thick, a foot or more is common. The completed structure is usually given a mud or thin cement stucco coating and then painted with a [lime]whitewash. They are very good insulators, making this a wonderful building material for the desert.