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Glite Dictionary
barren ground caribou

barren ground caribou

8.2
A large Arctic deer that lives on the tundra and migrates long distances
  • noun
  • /ˈbærən ɡraʊnd ˈkɛrɪbu/
  • Specialized
translation icon : caribú de tierras áridas
  • We had our spotting scopes trained on a herd of several hundred barren-ground caribou browsing three miles away in the broad, treeless, U-shaped valley of the Anaktuvuk River.

Examples

  • In the summer, the barren ground caribou travel long distances to find food and breeding grounds.

  • The scientists tracked the barren ground caribou to study their migration patterns in northern Canada.

  • During their migration, we observed a large group of barren ground caribou moving across the tundra.

Synonyms

Rangifer arcticus
vsbarren ground caribou
  • Specialized
9.9

A type of caribou that lives in the cold tundra of northern Canada

emphasizes long seasonal migrations rather than classification uncertainty

Surface Forms

barren ground caribou singular
barren ground caribous plural

Morphology

barren + ground + caribou

The phrase denotes a type of caribou from barren ground and its meaning is directly built from the constituents: 'barren' + 'ground' describes the habitat and 'caribou' names the animal. This is a compositional, descriptive compound following regular modifier+noun patterns (common cross-linguistically), so a B1 learner who knows the words would understand it.

Etymology

Barren ground caribou comes from the land they live on and the animal itself: barren ground is the cold, mostly empty tundra and caribou is a reindeer-like animal. That's why the name simply means 'the caribou that live on the barren ground'.