Word of the Day Archive
Tuesday August 31, 2004
sere \SEER\ , adjective:
Dry; withered.
. . .a country that has been transformed from a place of lush abundance to a sere, mutilated, inhospitable land.
-- Zofia Smardz, "A Nice Place for Extinction", New York Times, June 15, 1997
Recent rains have done little to relieve the sere conditions.
-- Thomas Omestad, "The struggle over water", U.S. News and World Report, April 10, 2000
Mr. Campbell, a biologist, spent three seasons in the Antarctic and returned with eerily clear perceptions of that sere and uninhabitable place.
-- review of The Crystal Desert, by David G. Campbell, New York Times, December 5, 1993
There was a lavatory at the end of the garden beyond a scraggy clump of Michaelmas daisies that never looked well in themselves, always sere, never blooming, the perennial ghosts of themselves, as if ill-nourished by an exhausted soil.
-- Angela Carter, Shaking a Leg
Sere comes from Old English sear, "dry."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for sere
