the.com/desert
a furnace that freezes at night and hoards more secrets than it shows water
means A barren, dry region where little rain falls and few plants grow — typically sandy or rocky and sparsely inhabited.
from From Latin desertum, 'a thing abandoned,' the past participle of deserere, 'to forsake' — de- ('un-') plus serere ('to join or bind together'). So at root a desert is literally a place that has been left behind, unbound from the company of living things. It reached English through Old French desert. Note the same Latin source gives us 'desert' as in 'just deserts' (what one deserves) — a separate sense entirely, and worth not confusing with the dry waste.
- night chill
- Sahara temperatures can plunge below freezing after dark
- growing
- Deserts expand yearly through desertification, eating arable land
- underwater past
- The Sahara was once green with rivers and lakes
- definition
- Defined by dryness, not heat; Antarctica counts too
- life thrives
- Specialized creatures survive months with no drinking water
sahara — world's largest hot desert at 9 million square kilometers spanning north africa
antarctica — world's largest desert by area at 14 million square kilometers, coldest and driest continent
kalahari — semi-arid sandy savanna covering 900,000 square kilometers in southern africa
atacama — driest non-polar desert in chile with some areas never recording rainfall