Library / English Dictionary

KALAHARI

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

A desert in southwestern Africa - largely Botswana

Synonyms:

Kalahari; Kalahari Desert

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Instance hypernyms:

desert (arid land with little or no vegetation)

Holonyms ("Kalahari" is a part of...):

Namibia; Republic of Namibia; South West Africa (a republic in southwestern Africa on the south Atlantic coast (formerly called South West Africa); achieved independence from South Africa in 1990; the greater part of Namibia forms part of the high Namibian plateau of South Africa)

Botswana; Republic of Botswana (a landlocked republic in south-central Africa that became independent from British control in the 1960s)

Republic of South Africa; South Africa (a republic at the southernmost part of Africa; achieved independence from the United Kingdom in 1910; first European settlers were Dutch (known as Boers))

Credits

 Context examples: 

As nomadic as the Kalahari's San Bushmen, D'Odorico and Okin move from place to place, setting up camp in game reserves, local village farms and communal lands to study the desert's dunes.

(Sleeping sands of the Kalahari awaken after more than 10,000 years, NSF)

But huge subterranean water reserves lie under the Kalahari, which covers parts of Botswana, Namibia and South Africa.

(Sleeping sands of the Kalahari awaken after more than 10,000 years, NSF)

Between 1930 and 1990, the grazed area of the Kgalagadi district in the southern Kalahari increased from 5,019 square miles to 12,355 square miles, and the number of boreholes increased from eight in 1955 to more than 380 in 1990.

(Sleeping sands of the Kalahari awaken after more than 10,000 years, NSF)

It's unclear, say D'Odorico and Okin, whether the Kalahari's dunes hang on the edge of a tipping point between their current state—vegetated fixed linear dunes—or have moved to what researchers call a degraded state, barren and active dunes.

(Sleeping sands of the Kalahari awaken after more than 10,000 years, NSF)