badlands
See also: Badlands
English edit
Alternative forms edit
Etymology edit
From earlier Bad Lands, calque of Canadian French mauvaises terres à traverser (“bad lands to cross”), itself a calque of Lakota mako sica (“land bad”). By surface analysis, bad + lands.
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
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 edit
Translations edit
arid terrain with severely eroded sedimentary rocks
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See also edit
Further reading edit
French edit
Etymology edit
Borrowed from English badlands.
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
badlands m pl (plural only)
Spanish edit
Etymology edit
Borrowed from English badlands.
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
badlands f pl (plural only)
- (geomorphology) badlands
- Synonyms: tierras baldías, tierras yermas