dustbowl

Noun

dustbowl (plural dustbowls)

1. An area which abounds in dust and which is very dry.
   • Concepts like reform, sanctions or KwaNatal indabas have little meaning in this dustbowl, which is host to more than a million people relocated from "white" farms and "black spots" in Natal, apart from the hundreds of thousands who lived there before the removals started here in the Sixties.1986, Sub-Saharan Africa Report - Issues 94-100, page 59
   • The moment they were unleashed the dogs reached the Hindu graveyard in quick time, and then reached the abandoned hockey playground, now a dustbowl, and from there they ran straight to Pandi's thatched hut and circled it twice.2011, Ram Govardhan, Rough with the Smooth, →ISBN
2. The central region of the United States during the 1930s.
   • Because of this general situation, namely, the factor that thousands of citizens in California because of evictions and suspension of income were forced to move into squatter camps, and that these squatter camps were to some extent used by the state and county for the purpose of segregating the...1940, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Education and Labor, Violations of free speech and rights of labor, page 21892
   • It was not until the end of the decade that Hollywood could take a more detached look at the social consequences of the Depression in John Ford's 1940 film of John Steinbeck's dustbowl novel The Grapes of Wrath.2004, James Chapman, Cinemas of the World: Film and Society from 1895 to the Present, →ISBN
3. The 1930s period.