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Glite Dictionary
Karoo

Karoo

1 8.6
A large dry area in central South Africa with few plants and wide open spaces
  • proper noun
: Karoo
  • In the Karoo, one can find impressive fossils that tell the story of ancient life.
  • the Little Karoo

Examples

  • The dry landscape of the Karoo is home to a variety of adapted plant and animal species.

  • This is my home, the great Karoo desert.

    Khumba (2013)

  • But if you want to trek all the way across the Karoo and back, that's all right by me.

    Khumba (2013)

  • One day, a brave young zebra took a journey across the vast Karoo.

    Khumba (2013)

  • The interior Karoo region has a semiarid climate, with cold winters and hot summers, which bring occasional thunderstorms.

    Academic text (2008)

  • Born in 1956, eight years after the Nationalist Party began implementing its policies of racial segregation, Bester grew up in the small nineteenth-century town of Montague on the edge of the Little Karoo desert.

    Academic text (1996)

  • The unique wildlife of the Karoo attracts many nature lovers and researchers.

Surface Forms

Karoo main

Etymology

Karoo comes from a local South African Khoikhoi word karo, meaning 'dry' or 'land without water', and the name was taken into Afrikaans and English to label the region. So, the word reminds us that the Karoo is a very dry, open landscape.