GC: n
S: UN – http://www.un.org/en/events/desertification_decade/ (last access: 24 July 2016); NatGeo – https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/desert/ (last access: 13 April 2025).
N: 1. c. 1200, “wasteland, wilderness, barren area,” wooded or not, from Old French desert (12c.) “desert, wilderness, wasteland; destruction, ruin” and directly from Late Latin desertum (source of Italian diserto, Old Provençal dezert, Spanish desierto), literally “thing abandoned” (used in Vulgate to translate “wilderness”), noun use of neuter past participle of Latin deserere “forsake” (see desert (v.)).
Sense of “waterless, treeless region of considerable extent” was in Middle English and gradually became the main meaning. Classical Latin indicated this idea with deserta, plural of desertus. Commonly spelled desart in 18c., which is unetymological, but it avoids confusion with the two other senses of the word.
2. A region of very low rainfall, where ‘very low’ is widely accepted to be <100 mm per year.
3. Any large, extremely dry area of land with sparse vegetation. It is one of Earth’s major types of ecosystems, supporting a community of distinctive plants and animals specially adapted to the harsh environment.
4. Desert environments are so dry that they support only extremely sparse vegetation; trees are usually absent and, under normal climatic conditions, shrubs or herbaceous plants provide only very incomplete ground cover.
5. Collocations:
- Adj. arid, barren, dry; vast; inhospitable; Arctic, polar | cultural (figurative) The theatre and cinema closed and the town became a cultural desert.
- Verb + desert: become, turn into/to; cross
- desert + verb: stretch.
- desert + noun: area, country, land, landscape, region; conditions; heat; sand, soil; floor, surface; plain; animal, plant.
- Prep. across/through the desert; in the desert; into the desert.
6. Cultural Interrelation: We can mention two movies The searchers (1956) directed by John Ford (1894-1973), and Lawrence of Arabia (1962) directed by David Lean (1908-1991).
S: 1. Etymonline – https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=desert (last access: 13 April 2025). 2. IPCC 4th Assessment Report, WG 2 Glossary (last access: 24 July 2016). 3 & 4. EncBrit – https://global.britannica.com/science/desert (last access: 24 July 2016). 5. OCD – https://www.freecollocation.com/search?word=desert (last access: 24 July 2016). 6. IMDb – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049730/, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056172/?ref_=fn_all_ttl_1 (last access: 13 April 2025).
SYN:
S:
CR: arid zone, desertification, drought, mirage.
