badlands

See also: Badlands

English

Alternative forms

• badland
• Bad Lands (archaic)

Etymology

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”)).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbæd.lændz/

Noun

badlands (plural badlands)

1. (geomorphology) An arid terrain characterized by severe erosion of sedimentary rocks.

   Synonym: malpais

   • 1904, Israel C. Russell, North America, New York: D. Appleton and Company, page 111:

     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.

   • 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:

     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.

Descendants

• → Esperanto: badlandoj
• → German: Badlands
• → French: badlands
• → Spanish: badlands

Translations

arid terrain with severely eroded sedimentary rocks

• Arabic: وَعْر m (waʕr)
• Asturian: ermedá f, ermu (ast) m
• Catalan: badlands f pl
• Danish: badland n
• Esperanto: badlandoj pl
• Faroese: illlendi n
• French: Mauvaises Terres (fr) f pl, badlands (fr) m pl
• German: Badlands pl
• Irish: drochthailte f pl
• Italian: calanco (it) m
• Korean: 악지(惡地) (ko) (akji)
• Leonese: páramu
• Russian: бедленд (ru) m (bedlend)
• Sicilian: malu passu m, sciara f
• Spanish: malpaís m, tierras baldías f pl, badlands f pl, tierras yermas f pl
• Swedish: badlands (sv) n
• Welsh: garwdiroedd m pl

See also

• desert
• moonscape

Further reading

• badlands on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

French

Etymology

Borrowed from English badlands.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bad.lɑ̃d/

Noun

badlands m pl (plural only)

1. (geomorphology) badlands

Spanish

Etymology

Borrowed from English badlands.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /badˈlands/ [bað̞ˈlãn̪d̪s]
• Rhymes: -ands
• Syllabification: bad‧lands

Noun

badlands f pl (plural only)

1. (geomorphology) badlands

   Synonyms: tierras baldías, tierras yermas

Usage notes

• The calque malpaís (mal (“bad”) + país (“country, land”)) refers to similar formations but specifically from lava plains found in volcanic fields.

Swedish

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English badlands.

Noun

badlands n

1. (geomorphology, uncommon) a badlands

   Near-synonym: kargt landskap (“barren landscape”)

   • 2024 June 20, “Nordisk asagud ger namn åt ny dinosaurie”, in Dagens Nyheter‎^[1], archived from the original on 21 June 2024:

     Fossilet upptäcktes i ett kargt landskap, så kallat badlands, som för 78 miljoner år sedan var ett grönskande träskområde.

     The fossil was discovered in a barren landscape, so-called badlands, which 78 million years ago was a lush swampy woodland.

Usage notes

• The term is rarely used outside scientific contexts, where more descriptive language is usually preferred.