Badlands

//ˈbæd.lændz// name, noun

name, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An arid terrain characterized by severe erosion of sedimentary rocks.

    "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."

  2. 2
    deeply eroded barren land wordnet
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    Badlands National Park, a national park in South Dakota.

Synonyms

All synonyms
bad landsdesertmalpaismalpaísmoonscape

Example

More examples

"An almost perfectly preserved nodosaur fossil was discovered in the Albertan badlands."

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”)).

Related phrases

national parksouth dakota

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.