| / English Dictionary |
ARID
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Lacking vitality or spirit; lifeless
Example:
a prissy and emotionless creature...settles into a mold of desiccated snobbery
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Similar:
dull (lacking in liveliness or animation)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Lacking sufficient water or rainfall
Example:
miles of waterless country to cross
Synonyms:
arid; waterless
Classified under:
Similar:
dry (free from liquid or moisture; lacking natural or normal moisture or depleted of water; or no longer wet)
Derivation:
aridity; aridness (a deficiency of moisture (especially when resulting from a permanent absence of rainfall))
Context examples:
The whole vast plain of Gascony and of Languedoc is an arid and profitless expanse in winter save where the swift-flowing Adour and her snow-fed tributaries, the Louts, the Oloron and the Pau, run down to the sea of Biscay.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The system could provide cheap and low-tech water filtration to rural, arid areas, such as the North African and Asian deserts, where water preservation is crucial for farmers and expensive, industrial water purification is not available.
(Soil-based filter bricks clean up water for Moroccan farmers, SciDev.Net)
In similar manner he collected lists of strong phrases, the phrases of living language, phrases that bit like acid and scorched like flame, or that glowed and were mellow and luscious in the midst of the arid desert of common speech.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Wildfires swept the landscape during arid regimes and reshaped the vegetation available for plant-eating animals.
(Big dinosaurs steered clear of the tropics, NSF)
The boreholes allow ranchers to use arid areas once grazed only in wet years.
(Sleeping sands of the Kalahari awaken after more than 10,000 years, NSF)
Scientists have developed a new explanation: rapid vegetation changes related to climate fluctuations between arid and moist climates and the resulting extensive wildfires of the time.
(Big dinosaurs steered clear of the tropics, NSF)
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