DESERT • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Desert

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/dˈɛzərt/ /dɪzˈərt/ Listen

noun

Desert n. That which is deserved; the reward or the punishment justly due; claim to recompense, usually in a good sense; right to reward; merit. "According to their deserts will I judge them." "Andronicus, surnamed Pius For many good and great deserts to Rome." "His reputation falls far below his desert."

Synonyms: Merit; worth; excellence; due.

Desert n.

A deserted or forsaken region; a barren tract incapable of supporting population, as the vast sand plains of Asia and Africa which are destitute of moisture and vegetation. "A dreary desert and a gloomy waste."

A tract, which may be capable of sustaining a population, but has been left unoccupied and uncultivated; a wilderness; a solitary place. "He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord." Note: Also figuratively. "Before her extended Dreary and vast and silent, the desert of life."

verb

Desert v. t. (past & past part. deserted; pres. part. deserting)

To leave (especially something which one should stay by and support); to leave in the lurch; to abandon; to forsake; implying blame, except sometimes when used of localities; as, to desert a friend, a principle, a cause, one's country. "The deserted fortress."

(Mil.) To abandon (the service) without leave; to forsake in violation of duty; to abscond from; as, to desert the army; to desert one's colors.

Desert v. i. To abandon a service without leave; to quit military service without permission, before the expiration of one's term; to abscond. "The soldiers... deserted in numbers."

Synonyms: To abandon; forsake; leave; relinquish; renounce; quit; depart from; abdicate. See Abandon.

adjective

Desert adj. Of or pertaining to a desert; forsaken; without life or cultivation; unproductive; waste; barren; wild; desolate; solitary; as, they landed on a desert island. "He... went aside privately into a desert place." "Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air."

Desert flora (Bot.), the assemblage of plants growing naturally in a desert, or in a dry and apparently unproductive place.

Desert hare (Zool.), a small hare (Lepus sylvaticus, var. Arizonae) inhabiting the deserts of the Western United States.

Desert mouse (Zool.), an American mouse (Hesperomys eremicus), living in the Western deserts.

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Etymology of 'Desert'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Desert" Quotes from Famous Books

... again farther south to Sohag, and a squadron carried on to Kilo 145 on the Sherika line to take up an outpost line. Camel patrols were also sent out into the desert. We had a scheme or two in the desert and a fire in the M.G. tent, at which the local fire brigade greatly distinguished itself by its masterly inactivity and futile energy. To the strains of "Kam leyal, Kam iyyam" ...

— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie

... Except the birds and the wild beasts, not one soul appeared near the monastery. The nearest human habitation was far away, and to reach it from the monastery, or to reach the monastery from it, meant a journey of over seventy miles across the desert. Only men who despised life, who had renounced it, and who came to the monastery as to the grave, ventured ...

— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... inferiority. Worse than all, he finds himself confounded with a still lower class, known at Bar Harbor as "the tourist"—elsewhere called the excursionist—who comes by the hundred on the steamers in linen dusters, and is compelled by force of circumstances to "do" Mount Desert in twenty-four hours, and therefore enters on his task without shame or scruple, roams over the cottager's lawn, stares into his windows, breaks his fences, and sometimes asks him for a free lunch. The boarder, of course, looks down on this man, ...

— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... Shanghai and Japan ports, observed to his friend Cesare Domenico, a good British subject born at Malta. They sat on the coolest corner in Port Said, their table commanding both the cross-way of Chareh Sultan el Osman, and the short, glaring vista of desert dust and starved young acacias which led to the black hulks of shipping in the Canal. From the Bar la Poste came orchestral strains—"Ai nostri monti"—performed by a piano indoors and two violins on the pavement. The sounds contended with a thin, scattered strumming of cafe mandolins, the tinkle ...

— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... pulling at his mustache and looking sometimes at a half-completed sketch, and sometimes at the blue stretch of water below the cliff. The conclusions were that he certainly should not become interested in Harriet and Mary, and, secondly, that Mount Desert made him paint rather ...

— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick

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