deserts - Simple English Wiktionary (2024)

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What is the plural of desert? ›

¹ desert /ˈdɛzɚt/ noun. plural deserts.

deserted - Simple English Wiktionary.

Traditional IPA: d! zɜːt. 2 syllables: "di" + "ZURT"

Etymology. Noun. Middle English desert "barren land," from early French desert (same meaning), derived from Latin deserere "to desert, abandon," from de- "from, away" and serere "to join together" Noun.

Despite its pronunciation, just deserts, with one s, is the proper spelling for the phrase meaning "the punishment that one deserves." The phrase is even older than dessert, using an older noun version of desert meaning "deserved reward or punishment," which is spelled like the arid land, but pronounced like the sweet ...

A desert is a hot and dry place like the Sahara, but add an s and some whipped cream and you have a dessert, a sweet treat to eat. Dessert has two s's because you always want two. (If you prefer two arid ecosystems, that's on you.) A desert (DEH-zert) is dry, but to desert (deh-ZERT) is to leave someone high and dry.

Only about 20 percent of deserts are covered by sand. The driest deserts, such as Chile's Atacama Desert, have parts that receive less than . 08 inches (2 mm) of precipitation a year. Such environments are so harsh and otherworldly that scientists have even studied them for clues about life on Mars.

The resulting cooler, drier air mass moves away from the Equator. As it approaches the tropics, the air descends and warms up again. The descending air hinders the formation of clouds, so very little rain falls on the land below. The world's largest hot desert, the Sahara, is a subtropical desert in northern Africa.

Synonyms: arid, infertile, barren, desolate. occurring, living, or flourishing in the desert: a desert tribe; a desert palm.

What does "raspberry" mean in slang? ›

[short for raspberry tart, rhyming slang for fart] : a sound of contempt made by protruding the tongue between the lips and expelling air forcibly to produce a vibration.

The Judean Desert in the Bible

In the New Testament, we read of Jesus going into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights. It was here in the Judean Desert, on the Mount of Temptation that the devil tried to tempt Jesus away from God. The desert city of Jericho features several times in the Old and New Testaments.

From Middle English desert (“wilderness”), from Old French desert, from Latin dēsertum, past participle of dēserō (“to abandon”). Generally displaced native Old English wēsten.

The correct spelling of plurals usually depends on what letter the singular noun ends in. 1 To make regular nouns plural, add –s to the end. cat – cats. house – houses. 2 If the singular noun ends in –s, –ss, –sh, –ch, –x, or –z, you usually add -es to the end to make it plural.

The expression just deserts is recorded in the early 1500s, and is still popular today, e.g., When the bad guy got locked up at the end of the movie, viewers felt he got his just deserts.

That is correct, 'sahara' does mean 'desert' in Arabic.