desert-rat

noun

any of various small rodents, as the kangaroo rat, inhabiting arid regions.

Chiefly Western U.S. one who lives in the desert, especially in order to prospect for gold or other valuable minerals.

Informal. a soldier fighting in the N African desert in World War II, especially a British soldier.

Origin:
1905–10, Americanism

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Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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World English Dictionary

desert rat

—n
1.	a jerboa, Jaculus orientalis, inhabiting the deserts of N Africa
2.	informal (Brit) a soldier who served in North Africa with the British 7th Armoured Division in 1941--42

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Desert-rat is always a great word to know.

So is interrobang. Does it mean:

a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.

a chattering or flighty, light-headed person.

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Matching Quote

"The secret affinity between gambling and the desert: the intensity of gambling reinforced by the presence of the desert all around the town. The air-conditioned freshness of the gaming rooms, as against the radiant heat outside. The challenge of all the artificial lights to the violence of the sun's rays. Night of gambling sunlit on all sides; the glittering darkness of these rooms in the middle of the desert. Gambling itself is a desert form, inhuman, uncultured, initiatory, a challenge to the natural economy of value, a crazed activity on the fringes of exchange. But it too has a strict limit and stops abruptly; its boundaries are exact, its passion knows no confusion. Neither the desert nor gambling are open areas; their spaces are finite and concentric, increasing in intensity toward the interior, toward a central point, be it the spirit of gambling or the heart of the desert—a privileged, immemorial space, where things lose their shadow, where money loses its value, and where the extreme rarity of traces of what signals to us there leads men to seek the instantaneity of wealth."

-Jean Baudrillard

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desert-rat

desert rat