Crossword clues for aridity
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Aridity \A*rid"i*ty\, n.; pl. Aridities. [L. ariditas, fr. aridus.]
The state or quality of being arid or without moisture; dryness.
Fig.: Want of interest of feeling; insensibility; dryness of style or feeling; spiritual drought.
--Norris.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1590s, from Middle French aridité or directly from Latin ariditatem (nominative ariditas) "dryness," from aridus (see arid). The Latin word was used figuratively of unadorned styles as well as stingy men.
Wiktionary
n. A long term lack of rainfall or moisture.
WordNet
n. a condition yielding nothing of value [syn: fruitlessness, barrenness] [ant: fruitfulness]
a permanent absence of rainfall [syn: aridness]
Usage examples of "aridity".
On the slope the blossoms of the wine-wooded manzanita filled the air with springtime odors, while the leaves, wise with experience, were already beginning their vertical twist against the coming aridity of summer.
Fish, sharks, coelacanths, a few squirrel-sized mammals, and lungfish were also common in freshwater terrestrial habitats, especially in the Late Jurassic when the effects of aridity were ameliorated.
I have often been reproached with the aridity of my genius--a deficiency of imagination has been imputed to me as a crime--and the Pyrrhonism of my opinions has at all times rendered me notorious.
I hate with a bitter hatred the names of lentils and haricots--those pretentious cheats of the appetite, those tabulated humbugs, those certificated aridities calling themselves human food!
A misty rain drifted down from sprinkler systems, rendering the air pleasantly damp after the aridity outside.
Him what He gives it to give, a fervent heart when it is fervent, a heart firm and faithful in its aridity, when He deprives it of sensible fervor.
But after the aridity of the salt pan he relished the close, comforting tangle of green around him, and he devoured the leaves, fruit, and fungi he was able to pluck from the ground around him.
Even in places far from the ice, like the equatorial regions of Africa, changes in wind patterns intensified the aridity, and vegetation shrank back to the coasts and river valleys.
Over time the bodies of Ultimate and her kind had specialized for the heat and aridity, and had simplified and become more efficient.
The woods, the open stretches of heather and yellow gorse, the clumps of Scotch firs, the shining ponds with their overhanging birch trees, their water lilies, their beds of rushes–these were beautiful and, to an eye accustomed to the aridities of the American desert, astonishing.
Some of the book's aridities may be an attempt to create a reflection of despair, but the zestlessness does sometimes read like a failure of professional sincerity, or nerve.
The sun and aridity of the Colorado Plateau acts quickly on the skin of whites, but it takes time to deepen the furrows.