tundra

plural tundras

1. countableuncountableA flat and treeless Arctic biome.

   1 more example

   The hut's walls rose without difficulty, and everything went smoothly until the problem of the roof confronted me. Of what use the four walls without a roof? And of what could a roof be made? There were the spare oars, very true. They would serve as roof-beams; but with what was I to cover them? Moss would never do. Tundra grass was impracticable. We needed the sail for the boat, and the tarpaulin had begun to leak.

   1904, Jack London, chapter 30, in The Sea-Wolf (Macmillan’s Standard Library), New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, →OCLC

2. countableuncountableA long stretch of something, such as time.

   We parcel up time into years and months and days because without compartmentalisation the tundra of time is impossible to navigate.

   2018 January 2, Sara Pascoe, “We should all pick achievable resolutions – get through three days of dry January and you’re a hero to me”, in The Guardian

   3 more examples

   His wife and he were childhood sweethearts; he had known her for 25 years. (He will call her “my wife” throughout, just as he cannot bear to name his two sons, however carefully and lovingly he will eventually describe them. They remain “the older one” and “the younger one.”) There are tundras of time for him to cross and cross again as he recalls their life together and its sudden end: a quarter‐century of quotidian love and bruises and the ultimate estrangement of long familiarity.

   1979 August 12, Ivan Gold, “One Man's Family”, in The New York Times

   When you stood at the gulf of unknowing, / When you saw the great tundra of time, / And you cried for the winds to come blowing, / And you called a monsoon from the tides of the moon, / 'Cause the roads were all dusty and dry.

   1991, Dar Williams, “Calamity John”, in All My Heroes Are Dead

   Putting on paper exactly what steps I need to take for each project does promote peace of mind, I find. And in my eagerness to tick items off on my "next action" lists, my productivity ramps up. Still, there are days of backsliding. I go to research something online, but once out on the wild Web, lose my way—and vast tundras of time—wandering further away from whatever I was looking for with each click of the mouse.

   2009 December 22, Louisa Kamps, “The Distraction Diet”, in Elle

1. A surname from Romanian.