Noun: desert
| Singular | desert |
| Plural | deserts |
Sample Sentences
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And ye poore Pilgrimes, that vvith reſtleſſe toyle
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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:]
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Not thus the land appear'd in ages past,
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A dreary desert and a gloomy waste. [1713, [Alexander] Pope, Windsor-Forest. […], London: […] Bernard Lintott […], →OCLC:]
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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:]
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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:]
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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:]
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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:]
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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:]
Nouns inflected like desert
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Middle English desert (“wilderness”), from Old French desert, from Latin dēsertum, past participle of dēserō (“to abandon”). Generally displaced native Old English wēsten. False cognate of Egyptian dšrt. See: Middle English Nouns '
desert', Latin Nouns '
dēsertum'.