desert

en-noun

desert (countable and uncountable, plural deserts)

From Middle English desert (“wilderness”), from Old French desert, from Latin dēsertum, past participle of dēserō (“to abandon”). Generally displaced native Old English wēsten.

沙漠

soa-bô͘, soa-bo̍k, see-bô͘, sa-bo̍k, sa-bô͘

And ye poore Pilgrimes, that vvith reſtleſſe toyle
 VVearie your ſelues in vvandring deſert vvayes […]

1591, Ed[mund] Sp[enser], Daphnaïda. An Elegy upon the Death of the Noble and Vertuous Douglas Howard,Daughter and Heire of Henry Lord Howard, Viscount Byndon, and Wife of Arthure Gorges Esquier. […], London: […] [Thomas Orwin] for William Ponsonby, […], →OCLC, signature [C4], recto:

Not thus the land appear'd in ages past,
 A dreary desert and a gloomy waste.

1713, [Alexander] Pope, Windsor-Forest. […], London: […] Bernard Lintott […], →OCLC:

A barren area of land or desolate terrain, especially one with little water or vegetation; a wasteland.

It is wholly out of the power of language to convey any idea of the blissful enjoyment of obtaining water, after an almost total want of it, during eight and forty hours, in the scorching regions of an Arabian desert, in the month of July.

1805 December, Julius Griffiths, “A Journey across the Desert”, in The Monthly Mirror, page 362:

The desert storm was riding in its strength; the travellers lay beneath the mastery of the fell simoom. Whirling wreaths and columns of burning wind, rushed around and over them.

1892, James Yoxall, chapter 5, in The Lonely Pyramid:

In particular, a barren, arid area of land which is hot, with sandy, rocky, or parched ground.

He declared that the country was an intellectual desert; that he was famishing for spiritual aliment, and for discourse on matters beyond mere nuggets, prospectings, and the price of gold.

1858, William Howitt, Land, Labour, and Gold; Or, Two Years in Victoria, page 54:

By contrast, the WR route is an economic desert between Newbury and Taunton.

1964 March, “News and Comment: Which way to the West?”, in Modern Railways, page 147:

So the question that is commonly asked is, why put a media incubator in a media desert and have it managed by a civil servant?

2006, Philip N. Cooke, Creative Industries in Wales: Potential and Pitfalls, page 34:

(figuratively) Any barren place or situation.

puszta

figuratively: any barren place or situation


desert

They were marooned on a desert island in the Pacific.

And he said vnto them, Come yee your selues apart into a desert place, and rest a while. For there were many comming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eate.

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Mark vi:31:

He […] went aside privately into a desert place.

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Luke ix:10:

See, from afar, yon Rock that mates the Sky, / About whoſe Feet ſuch Heaps of Rubbiſh lye: / Such indigeſted Ruin; bleak and bare, / How deſart now it ſtands, expos'd in Air!

1697, Virgil, “The Eighth Book of the Æneis”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, page 441, lines 252–255:

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, / And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

1750, Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Stanza 14:

Usually of a place: abandoned, deserted, or uninhabited.


desert

en-verb

desert (third-person singular simple present deserts, present participle deserting, simple past and past participle deserted)

deserts (present singular third-person)
deserting (participle present)
deserted (participle past)
deserted (past)

Borrowed from French déserter, from Late Latin desertō, from Latin desertus, from deserō (“abandon”).

You can't just drive off and desert me here, in the middle of nowhere.

To leave (anything that depends on one's presence to survive, exist, or succeed), especially when contrary to a promise or obligation; to abandon; to forsake.


desert

From Middle English desert, deseert, from Old French deserte, from deservir (“to deserve”), from Vulgar Latin dēserviō (“to gain or merit by giving service”).

der

just deserts

From the highest spire of contentment / my fortune is thrown; / and fear and grief and pain for my deserts / are my hopes, since hope is gone.

Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?

1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 17”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […], London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley, →OCLC:

July 4, 1789, Alexander Hamilton, Eulogium on Major-General Greene
His reputation falls far below his desert.

"Nonsense, Mina. It is a shame to me to hear such a word. I would not hear it of you. And I shall not hear it from you. May God judge me by my deserts, and punish me with more bitter suffering than even this hour, if by any act or will of mine anything ever come between us!"

1897, Bram Stoker, chapter 21, in Dracula, New York, N.Y.: Modern Library, →OCLC:

"It is true that certain common sense precepts of justice, particularly those which concern the protection of liberties and rights, or which express the claims of desert, seem to contradict this contention."

"For Aristotle, justice means giving people what they deserve, giving each person his or her due. But what is a person due? What are the relevant grounds of merit or desert?"

2009, Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?:

(often in the plural; now chiefly technical (in philosophy) or fossil) That which is deserved or merited; a just punishment or reward.

جَزاء

that which is deserved or merited; a just punishment or reward


serir

Immediately south of Tejerri, the most southern village of the Gatrun oasis, the sandy desert disappears, and great serirs, large fields covered by fine gravel, slowly lead up into a succession of broad valleys and ridges of an unsurpassed wildness.

1909, Royal Geographical Society (Great Britain), The Geographical Journal, page 256:


Sahara

From Arabic صَحَارَى (ṣaḥārā, “deserts”).

Coordinate term: Nubian Desert

A desert in North Africa, the largest hot desert in the world.


Sin

And they took their journey from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came unto the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt.

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Exodus 16:1:

A desert mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, situated between Elim and Mount Sinai.


Carson

Could originate from the Gaelic name "Carr" or "Carra", meaning "rock" or "fort," combined with "son", thus "son of Carr.".

A desert in the Lahontan Basin of Nevada.


Kalahari

A large desert in Southern Africa, including much of Botswana, and part of Namibia and Northern Cape, South Africa.


Gobi

From Mongolian Говь (Govʹ) or ᠭᠣᠪᠢ (Ɣobi).

In winter the thermometer on the Mongolian plateau sometimes drops to –40° Fahrenheit, yet the camels wander about with no sense of suffering. On the other hand, the Russian explorer, Prejevalski, found the temperature of the ground in the Gobi Desert in summer to be more than 140° Fahrenheit, and the camels are apparently as indifferent to this degree of heat as they are to the winter cold.

1901 December 21, “Science and Industry”, in The Friend: A Religious and Literary Journal, volume LXXV, number 23, →OCLC, page 181, column 1:

These missionaries were good people of whose devotion America can be proud. Some months later under Boxer mob-violence they were driven out on to the Gobi Desert. But the Tao Tai gave them protection which saw them safely across the desert to the Russian frontier, though with much hardship.

1951, Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, Years of Adventure 1874-1920, New York: Macmillan Company, →OCLC, →OL, page 44:

In 1941, Chang traveled to the remote Gobi Desert in Northwest China and lived in the Tun Huang Caves for two years and seven months.

1975 August 24, “Picasso, Chinese artists in Taipei show”, in Free China Weekly, volume XVI, number 33, Taipei, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 2:

The Gobi Desert is a large desert in Asia. It covers about 500,000 square miles (1,294,994 sq km), stretching from the Tien Shan Mountains in the west and across southeastern Mongolia and northern China.

2013, Moly Aloian, The Gobi Desert (Deserts Around the World), Crabtree Publishing Company, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 4:

The same livestock population explosion is damaging the overgrazed grasslands surrounding China’s Gobi Desert, where the dust storms are also increasing dramatically.

2013, Al Gore, “Outgrowth”, in The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change, New York: Random House, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 193:

In November, I visited China’s rocket base deep in the frozen Gobi Desert to witness the launch of three astronauts during the Shenzhou 15 mission to China’s new space station.

2022 December 16, Keith Bradsher, “A Visit Inside China’s Desert Rocket Base”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2022-12-16, Science:

Beijing regularly faces dust storms in March and April due to its proximity to the Gobi desert as well as deforestation throughout northern China.

2023 March 22, “China: Sandstorms blanket Beijing as air pollution spikes”, in Deutsche Welle, archived from the original on 2023-03-22:

A large desert in Asia, spanning the countries of Mongolia and China.


Thar

Borrowed from Hindi थर (thar), from थल (thal, “desert”), from Sanskrit स्थल (sthala, “land”).


Atacama

The Atacama Desert, a long desert in Chile, and the driest desert on Earth according to various sources.


desertlike

en-adj

desertlike (comparative more desertlike, superlative most desertlike)

more desertlike (comparative)
most desertlike (superlative)

[…] they provide views of hothouse Venus, desertlike Mars and two decidedly otherworldly moons of Jupiter: Io and Europa.

2007 April 13, John Schwartz, “Otherworldly Photos by Galileo, Voyager & Co.”, in New York Times:


Kyzyl Kum

a large desert in Central Asia in the doab between the rivers Amu Darya and Syr Darya, divided between Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan


Sonoran Desert

From the Spanish sonora (“sonorous”), from Latin sonoros. Compare sonorous.

A desert which covers large parts of the southwestern United States in Arizona and California, and of Northwestern Mexico.


deadland

I could not find out whether the victims are intoxicated before execution : it is highly probable, as the African's, and especially the Yoruban's, object is to send these messengers to deadland in the best of tempers.

1866, Leone Levi, Annals of British Legislation: Digest of blue books - Volume 2, page 222:

A conquering race would scarcely credit that its heroes would, after death, betake themselves to the deadland of the beaten and enslaved aborigines.

1946, Lewis Spence, British Fairy Origins, page 77:

“Do not do it,” said the god, “You cannot escape Ungit by going to the deadlands, for she is there also."

They feared lest passing souls, which had just quitted the bodies of dying people, should enter their huts and carry off the souls of the inmates to deadland.

1990, Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: Taboo and the perils of the soul, page 70:

[…] the unseen world of the spirits and ancestors. […] as messengers bearing questions to the "deadland" of royal ancestors.

2000, Francesca Piqué, Leslie H. Rainer, Palace Sculptures of Abomey: History Told on Walls, page 12:

The afterlife, especially in belief systems that do not include reward or punishment such as heaven and hell.


Mojave Desert

Audio (US)

Named after the Mohave people, from a shortened form of their endonym, Mojave Hamakhaave (“beside the water”).
The spelling Mojave is from Spanish, while Mohave comes from modern English.

An arid desert in southern California, north and east of Los Angeles and southeast of the Sierra Nevada, the driest desert in North America.


Namib

From Khoekhoe namib (“walkabout, wasteland”), from nami (“to walk about”).

A desert on the far southwestern coast of Africa, predominantly in Namibia.


Great Sandy Desert

An interim Australian bioregion, located in the northwest of Western Australia, straddling the Pilbara and southern Kimberley regions.


Taklamakan

Most researchers agree on makan being the Persian word for "place", however the etymology of Takla is less clear. The word may be an Uyghur borrowing from the Persian tark, "to leave alone/out/behind, relinquish, abandon" + makan

Surrounding the Taklamakan on three sides are some of the highest mountain ranges in the world, with the Gobi desert blocking the fourth. Thus even the approaches to it are dangerous. Many travellers have perished on the icy passes which lead down to it from Tibet, Kashmir, Afghanistan and Russia, either by freezing to death or by missing their foothold and hurtling into a ravine below. In one disaster, in the winter of 1839, an entire caravan of forty men was wiped out by an avalanche, and even now men and beasts are lost each year.
No traveller has a good word to say for the Taklamakan. Sven Hedin, one of the few Europeans to have crossed it, called it ‘the worst and most dangerous desert in the world’. Stein, who came to know it even better, considered the deserts of Arabia 'tame' by comparison. Sir Percy Sykes, the geographer, and one-time British Consul-General at Kashgar, called it 'a Land of Death', while his sister Ella, herself a veteran desert traveller, described it as 'a very abomination of desolation'.
Apart from the more obvious perils, such as losing one’s way and dying of thirst, the Taklamakan has special horrors to inflict on those who trespass there. In his book Buried Treasures of Chinese Turkestan, von Le Coq describes the nightmare of being caught in that terror of all caravans, the kara-buran, or black hurricane.

1980, Peter Hopkirk, Foreign Devils on the Silk Road, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, published 1984, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, pages 9–10:

According to the study, carbon-rich runoff from irrigation started seeping into saline aquifers under the Taklamakan nearly 5000 years ago, when humans first took hoe to the region. Since then, it has continued to collect.

2015, Catherine Matacic, “Carbon tomb buried deep under Chinese desert”, in Science:

The Chinese military has refined its anti-ship missile training from striking large, carrier-sized targets to smaller ships and naval bases, according to recent satellite images.
They show a training base in Xinjiang’s remote Taklamakan desert with the layout of mock-up ship moored in a naval base that resembles one in northeast Taiwan and other targets in Guam, according to a Taipei-based naval analyst.

2022 May 12, Minnie Chan, “Satellite images ‘suggest China is practising missile strikes on targets in Taiwan and Guam’”, in South China Morning Post, archived from the original on 2022-05-12:


Dasht-e Kavir

A desert in the middle of the Iranian Plateau


Gurbantünggüt

Holonym: Dzungaria

The principal cities in the Junggar Basin are Urumqi, Shehezi, Ghulja, Karamay, Altay, and Changji, and the basin holds China's second largest desert, the Gurbantünggüt.

2010, Yalikun Tashi, Philippe C. Chamard, Marie-Françoise Courel, Tashpolat Tiyip, Yiliminuer Tuerxun, Sam Drake, “The Recent Evolution of the Oasis Environment in the Taklimakan Desert, China”, in Graciela Schneier-Madanes, Marie-Françoise Courel, editors, Water and Sustainability in Arid Regions: Bridging the Gap Between Physical and Social Sciences, Springer, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 52:

In the Gurbantünggüt desert (44° 11'–46° 20'N, 84° 31'–90° 00'E) of Xinjiang, a study of algal populations growing on the soil surface of a desert rangeland dominated by Haloxylon persicum and H. ammodendron identified 121 algal species that belong to 49 genera, 21 families, and 4 phyla or subkingdoms (Cyanophyta, Chlorophyta, Bacillariophyta, and Euglenophyta each including 83, 20, 11, and 7 species, respectively (Zhang et al. 2005).

2020, Grassland Ecosystems of China, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 447:

People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China

A desert that occupies a large part of the Junggar Basin in Northern Xinjiang, in the northwest of the People's Republic of China.


White Sands

From white + sand.
* (New Mexico): From the color of the sand, actually gypsum crystals, instead of feldspathic sand.

A desert in Tularosa Basin, New Mexico, United States, composed of white gypsum sand.


Osoyoos

From o' + Soyoos, literally “of Soyoos”. Blend of Okanagan + Soyoos, from of the Soyoos, from Okanagan Sẁiẁs, from sẁiẁs (“narrowing of the waters”). The "o" represents an "of" and harmonization of toponyms in the Okanagan with a starting "O". It is named for the narrowing at the outlet of Osyoos Lake.

British Columbia
British Columbia#English

Ellipsis of Osoyoos Desert; a desert in Okanagan-Similkameen district, Okanagan Valley, Thompson-Okanagan, British Columbia, Canada


Kumtag Desert

People stand in shape as Olympic Rings to celebrate the upcoming 2008 Beijing Olympic Games at Kumtag desert region in Shanshan County, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region June 23, 2007.

2007 July 10, “China pledges safe fare for Games”, in Reuters, archived from the original on 2020-05-15, Healthcare & Pharma:

“DO YOU BELIEVE the voices are real?”
My Chinese guide and I were standing in the Yardang National Geopark, on the border between Gansu Province and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in China’s extreme northwest. The nearest town was Dunhuang, 110 miles to the southeast. Enormous yardangs — curving sandstone and mudstone strata carved by winds — towered over us. Others floated on the far horizon.
“You mean the singing sands?” I asked. On my map, an asterisk marked this strange feature of the Kumtag Desert, three miles from Dunhuang. If you throw yourself down the dunes in that place, the air resonates — sometimes like the lowest note on a cello; sometimes like a crack of thunder.

2020 May 11, Anna Sherman, “A Poetic Journey Through Western China”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2020-05-11:


Zaara

From Arabic صَحَارَى (ṣaḥārā, “deserts”). Similar as “Sahara”.

The lions of Mount Atlas, the summit of which is sometimes covered with snow, have neither the courage, the strength, nor the ferocity of the lions of Biledulgerid or of Zaara, whose plains are covered with burning sands. It is chiefly in these fervid deserts that we meet with those terrible lions, who are the dread of travellers, and the scourge of the neighbouring provinces… In the vast deserts of Zaara, in those that seem to separate two very different races of men, the Negroes and the Moors, in the unpeopled regions that lie about the territories of the ^([sic – meaning Hottentos]), and, in general, in all those southern parts of Africa and Asia, which man has disdained to inhabit, the lions are still very numerous, and continue in their natural state.

1781, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, “Lions”, in William Smellie, transl., Histoire Naturelle:

This ancient and faithful domestic, the pride of our island, uniting the useful, the brave and the docile, though sought by foreign nations and perpetuated on the continent, is nearly extinct where he probably was an aborigine, or is bastardized by numberless crosses, everyone of which degenerate from the invaluable character of the parent, who was deemed worthy to enter the Roman amphitheatre, and, in the presence of the masters of the worlds, encounter the pard, and assail even the lord of the savage tribes, whose courage was sublimed by torrid suns, and found none gallant enough to oppose him on the deserts of Zaara or the plains of Numidia.

1800, Cynographia Britannica, English Mastiff:

The evil has not rested here; emissaries have been dispatched to every part of Europe with bales of these patents; fictitious plats, and maps of the country, have been offered to the public's eye; rivers and streams have been made to flow where nature has denied water; mountains have been sunk into meadows, and rocks as barren as the sandy deserts of Zaara, have been represented as possessing the fertility of the banks of the Nile. Thousands of ignorant and innocent persons have been defrauded, and, with their families, plunged into irretrievable ruin by these nefarious practices.

1803, St. George Tucker, editor, Blackstone's Commentaries: with Notes of Reference:

1818, Alexander Corréard, J. B. Henry Savigny, Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816: Undertaken by Order of the French Government, Comprising an Account of the Shipwreck of the Medusa, the Sufferings of the Crew, and the Various Occurrences on Board the Raft, in the Desert of Zaara, at St. Louis, and at the Camp of Daccard. To Which Are Subjoined Observations Respecting the Agriculture of the Western Coast of Africa, from Cape Blanco to the Mouth of the Gambia.:


Gurbantunggut Desert

Gurbantünggüt Desert
Gurbantünggüt Desert#English

Alternative spelling of Gurbantünggüt Desert


Horqin

CH/T 4007 transliteration of Mongolian ᠬᠣᠷᠴᠢᠨ, in turn from Classical Mongolian ᠬᠣᠷᠴᠢᠨ (qorčin) and Middle Mongol 豁儿臣 (qorčin).