Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
Fertile Crescent

Fertile Crescent

1 5.1
A curved area of rich farmland from the Nile to the Tigris and Euphrates where early farming and cities began
  • proper noun
translation icon : Creciente Fértil
  • The Neolithic Revolution likely began in the Fertile Crescent around 10,000-8,000 BC and in other places between 10,000 and 5,000 BC.
  • Arab Fertile Crescent
  • Nationalism in the Fertile Crescent

And they're, you know, they're moving around within, within the, the Fertile Crescent, particularly in Palestine.

Examples

  • The agricultural revolution occurred earlier in the Fertile Crescent than in China because the former has a Mediterranean climate.

    Academic text (1999)

  • Diamond claims that social and technological development moved steadily westward from the Fertile Crescent to Europe.

    Academic text (1999)

  • Ever since the biblical injunction to Abraham, "Get thee out of thy country," caravans have crossed and recrossed the Fertile Crescent.

    Academic text (2010)

  • The Fertile Crescent, often regarded as the cradle of early civilization, stretches from the Nile River to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

  • In the Fertile Crescent, ancient agricultural practices laid the foundation for modern farming techniques.

  • Many historians believe that the Fertile Crescent played a crucial role in the development of human societies.

Surface Forms

Fertile Crescent main

Morphology

fertile + crescent

The compound is compositionally interpretable: 'fertile' describes productive land and 'crescent' signals a curved shape, so a learner can infer it refers to a curved area of fertile land. Although the specific encyclopedic reference to the particular Middle Eastern region and its historical status as the "cradle of civilization" requires extra cultural knowledge, the basic meaning is directly derivable from the constituents.

Etymology

Fertile Crescent comes from the image of a moon-shaped strip of rich land: fertile means good for crops and crescent means a curve like a moon, found between the Nile and the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. That's why the name now refers to the region often called the 'birthplace' of farming and early civilizations.