α. 1800s– badlands.
β. 1800s– badland.
Also with capital initial(s).badlandsn.
/ˈbadlandz/, U.S. /ˈbædˌlændz/ Originally U.S.
1. Extensive tracts of severely eroded, uncultivable land characterized by uneven rocky terrain and sparse vegetation, spec. (frequently with capital initial(s)) those occupying a barren plateau region of western North America, mainly in North and South Dakota and Nebraska. Also (in form badland, as mass noun): land of this type or in this region.
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the world > the earth > land > landscape > wild or uncultivated land > [noun] > barren land or desert
desert?c1225
bare1683
slate-land1733
barren1784
mesquite1834
badlands1850
hardscrabble1859
pindan1888
in (also up) the blue1963
wasteland1966
1843 I. N. Nicollet Rep. Map Hydrographical Basin Upper Mississippi River i. 41 The name of ‘Mauvaises Terres’ (bad lands) has been applied to districts cut up into deep and intricate chasms, from which the traveller could hardly hope to extricate himself without the assistance of a good guide.]
1850 T. Culbertson Jrnl. 7 May in Jrnl. Expedition to Mauvaises Terres & Upper Missouri (1952) 55 This morning at 7 Oclock I started from fort Pierre, for the Mauvaise Terre or Bad Lands of White River.
1850 T. Culbertson Jrnl. 8 May in Jrnl. Expedition to Mauvaises Terres & Upper Missouri (1952) 57 Grizzly Bears are often found in the Bad Lands.
1876 R. I. Dodge Black Hills 17 All the country south is ‘bad land’ or tertiary formation, much cut by deep and abrupt ravines.
1881 Amer. Naturalist 15 1034 Professor Haupt exhibited specimens of natural terra cotta produced by spontaneous combustion in the lignite of the Badlands.
1931 H. F. Pringle Theodore Roosevelt i. viii. 94 Until recently, buffalo had roamed the Bad Lands.
1950 Ecol. Monogr. 20 275/2 The badlands of the Milk River.
1998 Outdoor Canada Summer 91 Even the canyon's vast expanse of grasses, badland and riverbottom is a pale shadow of what it used to be.
2007 Bismarck (N. Dakota) Tribune (Nexis) 7 Nov. b1 The fourth mountain lion killed in the Badlands this season was a healthy subadult female.
2. figurative and in extended use. An area characterized by risk or danger.
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1891 A. Lang Ess. in Little 201 M. Zola and others have..found new worlds to conquer. But certain provinces in those worlds were not unknown to, but were voluntarily neglected by, earlier explorers. They were the ‘Bad Lands’ of life and character.
1892 Scribner's Mag. July 8/1 ‘The Bad Lands’ [in Chicago] is a quarter more repellent because more pretentious than ‘The Dive’,..being the abode of vice and crime rather than of poverty.
1952 Manch. Guardian Weekly 18 Dec. 3/1 Nothing in the White House career of Harry S. Truman, pride of Boss Pendergast's political badlands of Kansas City, so well became it as his behaviour [etc.].
1961 E. C. Kirkland Industry comes of Age p. ix An excursion through the period as a whole is, as one statistician has wittily put it, one ‘through the badlands of statistics’.
2004 N.Y. Times (National ed.) 3 Oct. i. 31/1 Now even the badlands of East New York, Bushwick and Red Hook are luring adventurous developers and homesteaders.
Compounds
General attributive (chiefly in form badland).
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1876 J. W. Powell Rep. Geol. Eastern Portion Uinta Mountains 168 The bad-land beds of the Bridger Group are very distinct from the limestones and sandstones of the Upper Green River.
1905 Auk 22 162 By searching the badland peaks with my binoculars I discovered the watching bird and the principles of its game.
1938 Jrnl. Mammalogy 19 295 The terrain has..developed into a badlands type that becomes increasingly more rugged to the eastward.
1968 R. W. Fairbridge Encycl. Geomorphol. 46/1 Denudation of badland slopes can produce interesting features.
2002 Adventure Trav. Mar.–Apr. 46/1 The spectacular flat-topped outcrops and escarpments of the arid badland country we passed through.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2008; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
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n.1850