Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
Sinai Desert

Sinai Desert

1 3.8
A large desert in northeastern Egypt between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea
  • proper noun
translation icon : Desierto del Sinaí

Examples

  • Eight years later, the U.S. ground presence in the Middle East was still restricted to a Navy supply base in tiny Bahrain and a few hundred peacekeepers in the Sinai Desert.

    Academic text (2010)

  • This was an experimental unit sent to the Sinai Desert by the United States in 1995 as the twenty-eighth American unit to participate in the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) in support of the Camp David Accords.

    Academic text (1998)

  • We decided to explore the unique landscapes of the Sinai Desert during our vacation in Egypt.

  • The ancient rock formations in the Sinai Desert tell stories of a time long before civilization.

  • As the sun set over the Sinai Desert, the sky filled with vibrant colors and a sense of tranquility.

Surface Forms

Sinai Desert main

Morphology

Sinai + desert

The meaning is directly and transparently derived from combining 'Sinai' (a place/peninsula name) with 'desert' (a vast dry region): it simply denotes the desert region on the Sinai Peninsula. This kind of place-name composition is a regular, cross-linguistic pattern, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can infer the MWE's meaning.

Etymology

Sinai Desert may get its name from the nearby Sinai mountain, famous in the Bible as the place where Moses met God. Because that mountain is in that dry land, people used the mountain's name for the whole desert, so Sinai Desert now means the large desert area around the mountain.