malpais

American  

[mahl-pah-ees] / ˌmɑl pɑˈis /

noun

1. Southwestern U.S. an extensive area of rough, barren lava flows.

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Etymology

Origin of malpais

1835–45, < Spanish mal país bad country

Example Sentences

This wonderful highland is a malpais or lava formation and densely covered with a forest of stately pines and mountain juniper.

From Tales of Aztlan; the Romance of a Hero of our Late Spanish-American War, Incidents of Interest from the Life of a western Pioneer and Other Tales by Hartmann, George (Henry George August)

Tell him to send his posse across the malpais toward the rim-rock.

From Oh, You Tex! by Raine, William MacLeod

From it one looked down into the deep gorge of the Southern Guaso Nyero, and across to a tangle of eroded mountains and malpais that filled the eye.

From African Camp Fires by White, Stewart Edward

These pictographs occur on a black, superficial layer of lava rock, or upon lighter stone with a malpais layer, which had been pecked through, showing a lighter color beneath.

From Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895-1896, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1898, pages 519-744 by Fewkes, Jesse Walter

The rock surface is a layer of black malpais, through which the totem signatures have been pecked, showing the light stone beneath, and thus rendering them very conspicuous.

From Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895-1896, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1898, pages 519-744 by Fewkes, Jesse Walter