Sahara
Americannoun
-
a desert in northern Africa, extending from the Atlantic Ocean to the Nile valley. About 3,500,000 square miles (9,065,000 square kilometers).
-
any arid waste.
noun
Discover More
At approximately 3.5 million square miles, it is the world's largest desert.
Other Word Forms
- Saharan adjective
- Saharian adjective
- trans-Sahara adjective
- trans-Saharan adjective
Etymology
Origin of Sahara
From Arabic ṣaḥra (plural ṣaḥārā ) “desert”
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
"It's actually like looking at a digital image of your new dinosaur and gawking over it in the tent in the middle of the Sahara."
From Barron's
The fossils were excavated in a remote region of the central Sahara by a 20 member research team led by Paul Sereno, PhD, Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago.
From Science Daily
In the heart of the Sahara, where the routes to Sudan and Libya cross, the Chadian city of Amdjarass has been transformed this week into an open-air celebration of desert culture.
From Barron's
She moved west over the Sahara Desert, picking up sand and heat, then swept out into the Atlantic, where she became a tropical storm and got her name.
From Literature
The findings reinforce the idea that Northwest Africa was a major center of early human evolution during periods when shifting climates opened migration routes across what is now the Sahara.
From Science Daily
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
