badlands
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also: Badlands
Alternative forms
Etymology
From earlier Bad Lands, calque of Canadian French mauvaises terres à traverser (“bad lands to cross”), itself a calque of Lakota Makhóšiča from makhó (“land”) and šiča (“bad”).
Pronunciation
Noun
badlands (plural badlands)
- (geomorphology) An arid terrain characterized by severe erosion of sedimentary rocks.
- Synonym: malpais
- 1904, Israel C. Russell, North America, New York: D. Appleton and Company, page 111:
- Not only do the Bad Lands present a most attractive field to the student of erosion and of the origin of earth forms, but their deathlike solitudes have been made to yield the most wonderful procession of strange extinct animals yet unearthed by geologists.
- 1922, John Dos Passos, “A Novelist of Revolution”, in Rosinante to the Road Again, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, →OCLC, page 85:
- No one has ever described better the shaggy badlands and cabbage-patches round the edges of a city, where the debris of civilization piles up ramshackle suburbs in which starve and scheme all manner of human detritus.
Descendants
Translations
arid terrain with severely eroded sedimentary rocks
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See also
Further reading
Etymology
Pronunciation
Noun
badlands m pl (plural only)
Etymology
Pronunciation
Noun
badlands f pl (plural only)
- (geomorphology) badlands
- Synonyms: tierras baldías, tierras yermas
Usage notes
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