SAHARA

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does Sahara mean? 

• SAHARA (noun)
  The noun SAHARA has 1 sense:

1. the world's largest desert (3,500,000 square miles) in northern Africa

  Familiarity information: SAHARA used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SAHARA (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The world's largest desert (3,500,000 square miles) in northern Africa

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Synonyms:

Sahara; Sahara Desert

Instance hypernyms:

desert (arid land with little or no vegetation)

Meronyms (parts of "Sahara"):

Libyan Desert (the northeastern part of the Sahara Desert in Libya and Egypt and Sudan)

Meronyms (members of "Sahara"):

Tuareg (a member of a nomadic Berber people of the Sahara)

Holonyms ("Sahara" is a part of...):

Africa (the second largest continent; located to the south of Europe and bordered to the west by the South Atlantic and to the east by the Indian Ocean)

 Context examples 

Natural climate cycles can affect rainfall in the Sahara and the Sahel.

(New study finds world’s largest desert, the Sahara, has grown by 10 percent since 1920, National Science Foundation)

A new paper describes the Trans-Saharan Seaway that existed 50 to 100 million years ago in the region of the current Sahara Desert.

(Ancient Saharan seaway illustrates how Earth’s climate and creatures can undergo extreme change, National Science Foundation)

Hepatocellular carcinoma is relatively rare in the United States but very common in all African countries south of the Sahara and in Southeast Asia.

(Hepatocellular carcinoma, NCI Thesaurus)

Or perhaps this IS the Desert of Sahara!

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

A country in northern Africa, bordering the North Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, south of Spain and between Algeria and Western Sahara.

(Morocco, NCI Thesaurus)

"Much obliged. I'll do anything if you'll let me stop a bit, for it's as dull as the Desert of Sahara down there. Shall I sew, read, cone, draw, or do all at once? Bring on your bears. I'm ready."

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

The Sahara expands as the Sahel retreats, disrupting the region's fragile savanna ecosystems and human societies.

(New study finds world’s largest desert, the Sahara, has grown by 10 percent since 1920, National Science Foundation)

I liked her better in the Desert of Sahara.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The paper presents analyses of three expeditions led by scientist Maureen O’Leary of Stony Brook University to rock exposures in the Sahara.

(Ancient Saharan seaway illustrates how Earth’s climate and creatures can undergo extreme change, National Science Foundation)

The researchers concluded that these climate cycles accounted for about two-thirds of the total expansion of the Sahara.

(New study finds world’s largest desert, the Sahara, has grown by 10 percent since 1920, National Science Foundation)