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dry landscape

dry landscape

1 3.9
An area of land with little water and few plants
  • noun
translation icon : paisaje seco
  • Histories first empire rose out of a hot, dry landscape, without rainfall to nourish crops, without trees or stones for building.

Examples

  • I was so close I could see the dry landscape spinning vertically from bottom to top like the sheet of a Pianola, and all I had to do was reach out and hook my fingers into its craters, like a bowling ball, to make it stop.

    Fiction book (1995)
  • The dry landscape was covered in cracked earth and sparse vegetation, giving it a desolate appearance.

  • As we drove through the dry landscape, we could see the distant mountains shimmering in the heat.

  • Wildlife had adapted to survive in the dry landscape, making it home to many unique species.

Synonyms

desert
vsdry landscape
894 1.3

A large dry area with very little rain and few plants

is any low moisture area, not only large sandy regions
arid landscape
vsdry landscape
1 5.0

A very dry area of land with little or no plant life

is a general area with low moisture rather than extreme lack of water
dryland
vsdry landscape
  • Specialized
1 5.1

Land that gets very little rain and has no irrigation

is any low moisture area regardless of rainfall or irrigation status

Antonyms

An area of land with many green plants and trees

How Dry

desert
894 1.3
dry landscape
1 3.9

Surface Forms

dry landscape singular

Morphology

dry + landscape

The meaning 'an area of land with little vegetation or moisture' is directly and predictably composed from 'dry' (not wet) + 'landscape' (an expanse of land). This simple adjective + noun combination follows transparent compositional patterns common cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily infer the meaning.

Etymology

Dry landscape may come from the simple picture of dry land and an open landscape, a wide place with little water and only a few plants. So, it now means 'an area of land with little vegetation or moisture'.