noun
definition
(usually in the plural) That which is deserved or merited; a just punishment or reward
noun
definition
A barren area of land or desolate terrain, especially one with little water or vegetation; a wasteland.
definition
Any barren place or situation.
verb
definition
To leave (anything that depends on one's presence to survive, exist, or succeed), especially when contrary to a promise or obligation; to abandon; to forsake.
example
You can't just drive off and desert me here, in the middle of nowhere.
definition
To leave one's duty or post, especially to leave a military or naval unit without permission.
example
Anyone found deserting will be punished.
Examples of deserts in a Sentence
Where the rainfall is still lower, deserts occur.
At the same time the hill districts and neighbouring deserts afforded pasturage for numerous flocks and herds, and thus admitted of the benefits of a mixed husbandry.
Large herds have also been observed in the deserts near Altyntagh.
Eremophytes.Under this term, are placed plants of deserts rid steppes.
Save where irrigation has reclaimed small areas, the whole region is a vast desert, though locally only some of the interior plains are known as "deserts."
Genealogical studies had become necessary through Omar's system of assigning state pensions to certain classes of persons according to their kinship with the Prophet, or their deserts during his lifetime.
The deserts between the river-valleys vary in extent, the largest being more than 70 m.
But, when the mists set in, the low hills near the coast bordering the deserts, which are called lomas, undergo a change as if by magic. A blooming vegetation of wild flowers for a short time covers the barren hills.
Roads with post-houses at intervals were made over the wildest mountain-ranges and the bleakest deserts for hundreds of miles.
After spending six years in Constantinople, where he published a Turkish-German Dictionary and various linguistic works, and where he acquired some twenty Oriental languages and dialects, he visited Teheran; and then, disguised as a dervish, joined a band of pilgrims from Mecca, and spent several months with them in rough and squalid travel through the deserts of Asia.
Extensive islands are thrown up, and attach themselves to the mainland, while the river deserts its old bed and seeks a new channel, it may be many miles off.
The country has little water and only a small part of it is under cultivation, the remainder being composed of arid, waterless plains, deserts - some stony, others with moving sands - barren hills and mountains.
Occupying 135 degrees of latitude, living on the shores of frozen or of tropical waters; at altitudes varying from sea-level to several thousands of feet; in forests, grassy prairies or deserts; here starved, there in plenty; with a night here of six months' duration, there twelve hours long; here among health-giving winds, and there cursed with malaria - this brown man became, in different culture provinces, brunette or black, tall or short, long-headed or short-headed, and developed on his own hemisphere variations from an average type.
These mythological ideas and symbols of the American aborigines were woven in their textiles, painted on their robes and furniture, burned into their pottery, drawn in sand mosaics on deserts, and perpetuated in the only sculptures.
They were, as Milton said, " faithful and freeborn Englishmen and good Christians constrained to forsake their dearest home, their friends, and kindred, whom nothing but the wide ocean and the savage deserts of America could hide and shelter from the fury of the bishops."
The scanty vegetation is a mixture of the flora of south-east Russia and that of the deserts of central Asia.
It appears to be a rule that the rivers which eventually terminate in the deserts of Gobi and Takla-makan grow increasingly larger in magnitude from east to west.
The tilting of the great block resulted in presenting a strong slope to the east, facing the deserts of the Basin Range province and in large measure determining their aridity; and a long moderate slope to the west.
As a result, the isotherms of July are strongly convex poleward as they cross the United States, the isotherm of 70 Sweeping up to the northern boundary in the north-west, and the heat equator leaping to the overheated deserts of the south-west, where the July mean is over 90.
Indeed the contrast between the moderate temperatures of the Pacific coast and the overheated areas of the next interior deserts is so great that the isotherms trend almost parallel to the coast, and are even overturned somewhat in southern California, where the most rapid increase of temperatures in July is found not by moving southward over the ocean toward the equator, but north-eastward over the land to the deserts of Nevada and Arizona.
The strong changes of temperature with the seasons are indicated also by the distribution of summer maxima and winter minima; summer temperatures above 112 are known in the south-western deserts, and temperatures of 100 are sometimes carried far northward on the Great Plains by the hot winds nearly to the Canadian boundary; while in winter, temperatures of 40 occur along the mid-northern boundary and freezing winds sometimes sweep down to the border of the Gulf of Mexico.
Increasing religious fervour, aided by persecution, drove them farther and farther away from the abodes of men into mountain solitudes or lonely deserts.
The deserts of Egypt swarmed with the "cells" or huts of these anchorites.
Proceeding from the deserts of Turkestan, the Seljuks reached the Hellespont; but this barrier was crossed and a European power founded by the Ottomans (Osmanli).
Crossing the deserts of Koko Nor, they passed the great lake of that name, with its island of contemplative lamas, and, following a difficult and tortuous track across snow-covered mountains, they at last entered Lhasa on the 29th of January 1846.
From this point of view his deserts are undoubtedly great; and for that reason he possesses an indefeasible right to a certain share in the renown of the papacy as a civilizing agent of the highest rank.
Many of the valleys in this region are mere sandy deserts, with an occasional oasis of cultivation, but there are also some very fertile tracts; among these is the plain on which lies the town of Ajmere.
In "cold deserts" the want of vegetation is wholly due to the prevailing low temperature, while in "hot deserts" the surface is unproductive because, on account of high temperature and deficient rainfall, evaporation is largely in excess of precipitation.
Cold deserts accordingly occur in high latitudes such as in polar regions.
Thus we have in the northern hemisphere the Sahara desert, the deserts of Arabia, Iran, Turan, Takla Makan and Gobi, and the desert regions of the Great Basin in North America; and in the southern hemisphere the Kalahari desert in Africa, the desert of Australia, and the desert of Atacama in South America.
Although rivers rising in more favoured regions may traverse deserts on their way to the sea, as in the case of the Nile and the Colorado, the fundamental physical condition of an arid area is that it contributes nothing to the waters of the ocean.
Natural springs give rise to oases at intervals and make the crossing of large deserts possible.
For a general account of deserts see Professor Johannes Walther, Das Gesetz der Wiistenbildung (Berlin, 1900), in which many references to other original authorities will be found.
The party of travellers whose journey in 394 is narrated in the Historia monachorum found at the chief towns along the Nile from Lycopolis (Assiut or Siut) to Alexandria, and in the deserts that fringed the river, monastic habitations, sometimes of hermits, sometimes of several monks living together but rather the life of hermits than of cenobites.
Whole towns and villages were laid in ashes, and vast districts turned into deserts.
But men of both races were trusted and favoured according to their deserts.
Leprosy is common, especially in the inland towns; while ophthalmia is prevalent in the north, especially among the poorer classes, who are compelled to expose themselves to the blinding dust from the deserts and the excessive glare of the sun reflected from the burning sand.
Beyond the Nile valley east and west stretch great deserts, containing here and there fertile oases.
Its limits east and west are determined bi the higher ground of the deserts, to which the silt-laden waters 0 the Nile in flood time cannot reach.
In the deserts haifa grass and several kinds of thorn bushes grow; and wherever rain or springs have moistened the ground, numerous wild flowers thrive.
Numerous gazelles inhabit the deserts.
They disappeared in the deserts of Kordofan, where they were destroyed by the Mahdists about 50 m.
Egypt normally included the whole of the Nile valley from the First Cataract to the sea; pure Egyptians, however, formed the population of Lower Nubia above the Cataract in prehistori.c times; at some periods also the land was divided into separate kingdoms, while at others Egypt stretched southward into Nubia, and it generally claimed the neighboring Libyan deserts and oases on the west and the Arabian deserts on the east to the shore of the Red Sea, with Sinai and the Mediterranean coast as far as Rhinocorura (El Arish).
For more lasting and ambitious work in temples and tombs the materials could be obtained from the rocks and deserts of the Nile valley.
Of stones that were accounted precious Sinai produced turquoise and the Egyptian deserts garnet, carnelian and jasper.
Egypt was isolated by the deserts and the sea.
Of neolithic remains, arrowheads and other implements are found in some numbers in the deserts.
In his reign were executed the fine paintings in the tomb of Khnemhotp at Beni Hasan, which include a remarkable scene of Semitic Bedouins bringing eye-paint to Egypt from the eastern deserts.
It was attributed to Seth, the spirit of evil who according to Egyptian tradition governed the central deserts of Africa.
The game was sought in the open deserts which border on both sides the valley of the Nile; but (by the wealthy) sometimes in enclosed spaces into which the animals had been driven or in preserves.