Crossword clues for chaparral
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Chaparral \Cha`par*ral"\, n. [Sp., fr. chaparro an evergeen oak.]
A thicket of low evergreen oaks.
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An almost impenetrable thicket or succession of thickets of thorny shrubs and brambles.
Chaparral cock; fem. Chaparral hen (Zo["o]l.), a bird of the cuckoo family ( Geococcyx Californianus), noted for running with great speed. It ranges from California to Mexico and eastward to Texas; -- called also road runner, ground cuckoo, churea, and snake killer. It is the state bird of New Mexico.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"shrub thicket," 1850, American English, from Spanish chaparro "evergreen oak," perhaps from Basque txapar "little thicket," diminutive of sapar "heath, thicket."\n\nIn Spain, a chaparral\n is a bush of a species of oak. The termination al signifies a place abounding in; as, chaparral, a place of oak-bushes, almendral, an almond orchard; parral, a vineyard; cafetal, a coffee plantation, etc., etc.\n
\nThis word, chaparral, has been introduced into the language since our acquisition of Texas and New Mexico, where these bushes abound. It is a series of thickets, of various sizes, from one hundred yards to a mile through, with bushes and briars, all covered with thorns, and so closely entwined together as almost to prevent the passage of any thing larger than a wolf or hare.
[John Russell Bartlett, "Dictionary of Americanisms," 1859]
Wiktionary
n. A region of shrubs, typically dry in the summer and rainy in the winter. The coast of the Mediterranean is such a region.
WordNet
Gazetteer
Housing Units (2000): 2134
Land area (2000): 38.759454 sq. miles (100.386522 sq. km)
Water area (2000): 0.000000 sq. miles (0.000000 sq. km)
Total area (2000): 38.759454 sq. miles (100.386522 sq. km)
FIPS code: 14250
Located within: New Mexico (NM), FIPS 35
Location: 32.039072 N, 106.429630 W
ZIP Codes (1990): 88021
Note: some ZIP codes may be omitted esp. for suburbs.
Headwords:
Chaparral
Wikipedia
Chaparral is a shrubland or heathland plant community found primarily in the U.S. state of California and in the northern portion of the Baja California Peninsula, Mexico. It is shaped by a Mediterranean climate (mild, wet winters and hot dry summers) and wildfire, featuring summer-drought-tolerant plants with hard sclerophyllous evergreen leaves, as contrasted with the associated soft-leaved, drought-deciduous, scrub community of coastal sage scrub, found below the chaparral biome. Chaparral covers 5 percent of the state of California, and associated Mediterranean shrubland an additional 3.5 percent. The name comes from the Spanish word for scrub oak, chaparro.
Chaparral is a Spanish word which entered English vocabulary and means a forest made of short trees.
Chaparral may refer to:
Usage examples of "chaparral".
You will find a high chaparral of pinyon and scrub oak as far east as the reservation line.
Wherever the cactus roots or flash-flood washes left room, you saw thin chaparral, or stickerbush, from creosote and catclaw to eight- or ten-foot whitebark and paloverde.
Beyond riparian woodland on the floodplain are thickets of mesquite and catclaw and these give way to chaparral and an evergreen woodland of oaks and junipers on the slopes.
The one thing they valued him for - that gave him potential status as a human being in their eyes - was his monster truck: 454 cubic inches of V-8 power, double wheels on the rear axle, a thick black roll bar brandishing great mesh-covered Stalag 17 searchlights that could pick out a shrew on a rock in a midnight windstorm across two miles of chaparral.
V-8 power, double wheels on the rear axle, a thick black roll bar brandishing great mesh-covered Stalag 17 searchlights that could pick out a shrew on a rock in a midnight windstorm across two miles of chaparral.
The Mexican and Anglo vaqueros, or buckaroos, had decided any sticker-brush too tall to call weeds and too short to call woods was chaparral.
So Longarm circled the settlement through the hillside chaparral and rode on and then some, until he figured he was just south of where he and Kinipai had crossed the river much earlier.
He said he was more intent on covering distance than cutting cows in chaparral, and she said she admired a man who knew just what he wanted.
When the pony balked at moving off farther, Longarm dismounted, Winchester in hand, to lead the balky brute deeper into whatever chaparral was left.
He knew a man could flatten out in thin chaparral with an outside chance of not being seen.
They pulled the wet saddles off the horses and hobbled them and walked off in separate directions through the chaparral to stand spraddlelegged clutching their knees and vomiting.
The track of flattened chaparral was still visible bending away over the floor of the desert.
In the canyons and arroyos, the chaparral and manzanita grew in dark olive-green thickets.
Occasionally a jack rabbit bounded across the open, from one growth of chaparral to another, taking long leaps, his ears erect.
His clothes ripped and torn by weeks of flight and hiding in the chaparral, were ragged beyond words, the boots were shreds of leather, bloody to the ankle with furious spurring.