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Dust Bowl
[ duhst bohl ]
noun
- a period, throughout the 1930s, when waves of severe drought and dust storms in the North American prairies occurred, having devastating consequences for the residents, livestock, and agriculture there:
When the Dust Bowl began, the Great Depression was already underway—it was one disaster on top of another.
- the region that suffered from these waves of drought and dust storms, including the entire U.S. Midwest and, in Canada, the southern prairies of Alberta and Saskatchewan:
Our Oklahoma panhandle was smack dab in the center of that heartless Dust Bowl.
- (lowercase) any similar dry region elsewhere:
Where we see the tragic formation of dust bowls in Asia and Africa, overgrazing is believed to be the main culprit.
dust bowl
1noun
- a semiarid area in which the surface soil is exposed to wind erosion and dust storms occur
Dust Bowl
2noun
- the Dust Bowlthe Dust Bowl the area of the south central US that became denuded of topsoil by wind erosion during the droughts of the mid-1930s
Dust Bowl
- A parched region of the Great Plains , including parts of Oklahoma , Arkansas , and Texas , where a combination of drought and soil erosion created enormous dust storms in the 1930s. The novel , by John Steinbeck , describes the plight of the “Okies” and “Arkies” uprooted by the drought and forced to migrate to California .
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Word History and Origins
Origin of Dust Bowl1
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Example Sentences
It mostly sprang up during the Great Depression because of Dust Bowl refugees heading west.
Finally, in a virtually extinct Dust Bowl drawl, he started talking.
Judith Baca’s vivid murals grace a freeway underpass and a flood control channel, where they convey vital California stories like those of Dust Bowl migrants, the Zoot Suit Riots, and the first Olympic women’s marathon.
From the American Dust Bowl, thousands of destitute farm families stream westward.
My parents were born in the midst of the Dust Bowl, so I heard those stories my whole life.
As a “giant heat wave” moved east across the nation, heat records that dated back to the Dust Bowl fell with uncanny speed.
I grew up on the prairies of South Dakota during the years of the Dust Bowl and this book tells our story.
During the dust bowl period, millions of people were forced to abandon their farms and livelihoods.
The people from the Dust Bowl, as the district is called, had to migrate, or starve.
Dramatic picturization of the forces of nature operating in what droughts of the 1930's caused to be called "the Dust Bowl."
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