badlands
/ˈbæd.lændz/
badlands noun: an arid terrain characterized by severe erosion of sedimentary rocks.
Noun
badlands (plural badlands)
- An arid terrain characterized by severe erosion of sedimentary rocks.
- Not only do the Bad Lands present a most attractive field to the student of erosion and of the origin of earth forms, but their deathlike solitudes have been made to yield the most wonderful procession of strange extinct animals yet unearthed by geologists.1904, Israel C. Russell, North America, New York: D. Appleton and Company, page 111
- No one has ever described better the shaggy badlands and cabbage-patches round the edges of a city, where the debris of civilization piles up ramshackle suburbs in which starve and scheme all manner of human detritus.1922, John Dos Passos, “A Novelist of Revolution”, in Rosinante to the Road Again, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, →OCLC, page 85
- Synonyms:
- malpais
- An arid region of Western Canada characterized by significant erosion and odd land formations containing dinosaur and other fossils.
Proper noun capitalized: Badlands
Badlands
- Badlands National Park, a national park in South Dakota.
badlands meaning in Arabic
badlands in Arabic
- arid terrain with severely eroded sedimentary rocks
- وَعْر waʕr
Synonyms of badlands
Forms of badlands
| plural | badlands |
|---|---|
| alternative form | badland |
| alternative form (archaic) | Bad Lands |
Origin of badlands
From earlier Bad Lands, calque of Canadian French mauvaises terres à traverser (“bad lands to cross”), itself a calque of Lakota Makȟóšiča (from makȟá (“land”) + o- (attributive prefix) + šíča (“bad”)).
Questions about badlands
- What does badlands mean?
- Badlands means an arid terrain characterized by severe erosion of sedimentary rocks.
- What is badlands in Arabic?
- Badlands in Arabic is وَعْر (waʕr). See Badlands meaning in Arabic.
- What part of speech is badlands?
- Badlands can be a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce badlands?
- Badlands is pronounced /ˈbæd.lændz/.
- What is the plural of badlands?
- The plural of badlands is badlands.
Words near badlands in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: badlands (page history and authors); Badlands (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “badlands.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/badlands. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.