desert island

plural desert islands

1. A deserted island, an uninhabited island, especially one in the tropics and (now frequently misunderstood as) a small and almost entirely sandy desert.

   What would I take with me to a desert island?

   2 more examples

   My first crew ran away; two men were lost for a month on a desert island; we were ten times aground on coral reefs; we lost four anchors; the sails were devoured by rats; the small boat was lost astern; we were thirty-eight days on the voyage home, which should not have taken twelve [...] we had not one single day of fair wind.

   1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume II, London: Macmillan and Co., page 384

   Desert islands cannot harbour treachery, even from the enemy hidden within man himself.

   1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 38

2. An island that is completely or mostly a desert, an arid island.

   Why are you marooning me on a desert island? It's probably full of guano. Can't I go somewhere nice?

3. attributivefigurativelyDescribing a thing considered so personally indispensable or beloved that one could never tire of it, used especially for books and music.

   No, no, no. It's a thought experiment. Your desert island books are the one or five or ten books that you could always learn from and never get sick of.

   3 more examples

   My desert-island, all-time, top five most memorable split-ups, in chronological order:[…]

   1995, Nick Hornby, High Fidelity, London: Victor Gollancz, →ISBN, page 9

   It would be my desert island book, this Love Life for Every Married Couple; marriage being to me the most obvious path to the hardest lesson we've all got to learn […]

   2017, Alan Rifkin, Burdens by Water: An Unintended Memoir

   A roast dinner would be my desert island meal and I'd missed Dad's divine crispy King Edwards each Sunday.

   2021, E. K. J. Wright, How Do You Stop a Magpie Mobbing Your Mind?