badlands

alternative badland · alternative archaic Bad Lands

1. geographyAn arid terrain characterized by severe erosion of sedimentary rocks.

   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.

   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

   1 more example

   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.

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

   Synonyms: malpais

2. Alberta; Saskatchewan; Alberta; SaskatchewanAn arid region of Western Canada characterized by significant erosion and odd land formations containing dinosaur and other fossils.

1. Badlands National Park, a national park in South Dakota.