Word.ws English Dictionary

desert rat

desert rat noun: a gerbil (subfamily Gerbillinae) of the deserts of Africa and Asia.

desert rat: a gerbil (subfamily Gerbillinae) of the deserts of Africa and Asia
Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

desert rat (plural desert rats)

  1. A gerbil (subfamily Gerbillinae) of the deserts of Africa and Asia
  2. A kangaroo rat (genus Dipodomys) from North America
  3. A Natal multimammate mouse (Mastomys natalensis) from Africa
  4. A jerboa, including those of species Jaculus orientalis and Jaculus jaculus (lesser Egyptian jerboa), which inhabit the desert regions of North Africa.
  5. (historical, slang) A British or Australian soldier who served in North Africa with the British 7th Armoured Division in 1941-42.
  6. (historical, slang) A wandering prospector.

Forms of desert rat

pluraldesert rats

Questions about desert rat

What does desert rat mean?
Desert rat means a gerbil (subfamily Gerbillinae) of the deserts of Africa and Asia.
What part of speech is desert rat?
Desert rat is a noun.
What is the plural of desert rat?
The plural of desert rat is desert rats.

Words near desert rat in the dictionary

  1. desert physa
  2. desert physae
  3. desert physas
  4. desert principle
  5. desert raisin
  6. desert rat
  7. desert rats
  8. desert rheumatism
  9. desert rock
  10. desert rose
  11. desert roses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: desert rat (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: “desert rat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/desert_rat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.