arid
/ˈarɪd
/adjective
1(Of land or a climate) having little or no rain; too dry or barren to support vegetation: the arid plains north of Cape Town...
- However, from Karadi to Dandi, the land is arid and the vegetation scrubby.
- The arid climate makes the desert the best outdoor setting to keep planes free of corrosion.
- The arid land of this autonomous republic supports a nomadic lifestyle.
Synonyms
dry, dried up, waterless, as dry as a bone, moistureless, parched, scorched, baked, thirsty;
dehydrated, desiccated;
barren, desert, waste, desolate;
infertile, non-fertile, unfruitful, unproductive, uncultivatable, sterile
rare infecund, droughty, torrefied
2Lacking in interest, excitement, or meaning: his arid years in suburbia...
- Human stories are more interesting than an arid study of theology.
- Yoga classes without this element seem to me arid and dull.
Synonyms
dreary, dull, drab, dry, sterile, banal, colourless, monochrome, unstimulating, uninspiring, flat, boring, uninteresting, monotonous, lifeless, tedious, vapid, jejune, soul-destroying
Derivatives
aridity
/ noun ...- There was a world cooling - eight hypotheses exist to explain it! - with intense aridity that created Australia's sub-zones such as south-western and north-western Australia.
- By the way, Darwin was a naturalist and most would take his comments about Australia's limited prospects as relating to soil quality and aridity, and the subsequently smaller potential population.
- More than anything I was struck by how incredibly green and lush everything looked after the dryness of the Spanish countryside. I have not been to Spain before, and I was quite taken aback by the aridity of it all.
aridly
- I am struck by how many serious intellectuals we have writing at the moment, not aridly intellectual, but certainly with a spiritual dimension - the spirituality of the everyday.
- Parris also seems to approve of the seemingly sophisticated but actually aridly semantic implied argument behind the phrase.
- The writer continues to investigate the ideas of care and love, but he also speculates aridly on the nature of literary creativity.
aridness
/ noun ...- Book releases, art exhibitions, theatre camps and more, holding out the promise of being a haven for creativity in these times of aridness.
- The bouncy tempo and scale-based riff are the sparsest elements on the whole album and after 40 minutes of extraordinarily dense arrangements the aridness is a nice change of pace.
- The lands of the Southwest, in their aridness, showed him concretely the underlying fragility of the land community, and the interconnectedness of its members.
Origin
Mid 17th century: from French aride or Latin aridus, from arere 'be dry or parched'.