Word.ws English Dictionary

xerify

xerify verb: to make xeric (dry).

Verb

xerify (third-person singular simple present xerifies, present participle xerifying, simple past and past participle xerified)

  1. To make xeric (dry).
    • Severe fires xerify forest sites by consuming much of the forest floor and perhaps even organic matter in the mineral soil , as well as by exposing the site to greater solar radiation through canopy reduction. Conversion of mesic sites to xeric conditions[…]1991, Fire and the Environment: Ecological and Cultural Perspectives : Proceedings of an International Symposium, Knoxville, Tennessee, March 20-24, 1990, page 17
    • This band of denser vegetation prevents water and sediment from moving father down the slope. This effectively xerifies (dries out) and distrophicates (depletes nutrients in) the intervening spaces. Dominating chenopod shrubs can, because of salt pumping and alteration of wind and water erosion and...1992, William Aaron Nierenberg, Encyclopedia of Earth System Science, volume 4, →ISBN, page 180

Forms of xerify

third-person singular presentxerifies
present participlexerifying
past participlexerified
pastxerified

Origin of xerify

From xer- + -ify.

Questions about xerify

What does xerify mean?
Xerify means to make xeric (dry).
What part of speech is xerify?
Xerify is a verb.
What is the past tense of xerify?
The past tense of xerify is xerified.

Words near xerify in the dictionary

  1. xeriffs
  2. xerification
  3. xerified
  4. xerifies
  5. xerifs
  6. xerify
  7. xerifying
  8. xerine
  9. xerines
  10. xeriphilic
  11. xeriphyte

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: xerify (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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