deadland

English

Etymology

dead +‎ land

Noun

deadland (plural deadlands)

1. Wasteland; a desert or other place that does not support life.
   • 1920, Lew Sarett, Many Many Moons: A Book of Wilderness Poems, page 46:

     After the feverish days over deadland trails, — The repose of the gray-veiled and quiet-eyed twilight, The shimmering haze of the blue mountain valley, And the tranquil blue deep of the pool

   • 1970, The Month, page 304:

     He runs out of gas, and back on the ground meets up with a girl who is motoring through the deadland to meet her boss in Phoenix for some obscure technocratic purpose.

   • 1981, Stephen R. Donaldson, The power that preserves, →ISBN, page 390:

     Within that deadland lies Kurash Qwellinir, the Shattered Hills.

   • 2005, Ellen Dee Davidson, Stolen Voices, →ISBN, page 99:

     These must be the real deadlands. Here, there is no new growth to camouflage what the wars have done.

2. A place of death; a deadly land.
   • 1905, Frederick C Vernon-Harcourt, From Stage to Cross: The Record of a Rolling Stone, page 236:

     Does the hideous famine that gnaws the entrails with fiery fangs and burns up the wrenched and tortured tissues till the land sickens with its burden of deadland dying—does that show His pity?

   • 1977, Meanjin - Volume 36, page 499:

     A band of iron fastens around his neck, a long chain drags him to the ground, pulling him away from his people to the deadland of the south — to the land of strangers, unknown and terrifying.

   • 2011, Ben Okri, A Time For New Dreams, →ISBN:

     Nations that imprison, torture, assassinate, or drive their writers into exile fall into the deadlands of their own darkness.

3. The afterlife, especially in belief systems that do not include reward or punishment such as heaven and hell.
   • 1866, Leone Levi, Annals of British Legislation: Digest of blue books - Volume 2, page 222:

     I could not find out whether the victims are intoxicated before execution : it is highly probable, as the African's, and especially the Yoruban's, object is to send these messengers to deadland in the best of tempers.

   • 1946, Lewis Spence, British Fairy Origins, page 77:

     A conquering race would scarcely credit that its heroes would, after death, betake themselves to the deadland of the beaten and enslaved aborigines.

   • 1956, C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces:

     “Do not do it,” said the god, “You cannot escape Ungit by going to the deadlands, for she is there also."

   • 1990, Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: Taboo and the perils of the soul, page 70:

     They feared lest passing souls, which had just quitted the bodies of dying people, should enter their huts and carry off the souls of the inmates to deadland.

Usage notes

This term is often used in the plural with the definite article: "the deadlands".