| 释义 |
bad lands orig. and chiefly U.S.
[tr. F. mauvaises terres: bad a. 4.]
Arid barren lands, esp. in certain parts of western U.S.A., characterized by erosion of the soft surface strata in varied and fantastic forms. Also bad land, badland, esp. attrib.
1852D. D. Owen Geol. Surv. Wisconsin 195 The country of the ‘Bad Lands’..lying high up on White River. 1872Schele de Vere Americanisms 180 It is different with the Bad Lands, which border the Missouri for about twenty miles, and were called by the first French settlers, Mauvaises Terres. 1876R. I. Dodge Black Hills 17 All the country south is ‘bad land’ or tertiary formation, much cut by deep and abrupt ravines. 1931H. F. Pringle T. Roosevelt i. viii. 94 Until recently, buffalo had roamed the Bad Lands. 1942C. A. Cotton Geomorphol. (ed. 3) 31 Bare ground is carved by rain-wash into innumerable closely-spaced, steep-sided ridges and valleys..producing an almost impassable land surface generally referred to as ‘badlands’ or badland erosion.
transf. and fig.
1892Scribner's Mag. July 8/1 ‘The Bad Lands’ [in Chicago] is a quarter more repellent because more pretentious than ‘The Dive’,..being the abode of vice and crime rather than of poverty. 1952Manchester Guardian Weekly 18 Dec. 3/1 Nothing in the White House career of Harry S. Truman, pride of Boss Pendergast's political badlands of Kansas City, so well became it as his behaviour [etc.]. |
