badlands

name

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

noun

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”)).

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.”

   “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.”