alkali flat

American  

noun

1. a level area, as a dry lake bed, in which evaporation has concentrated alkali minerals, as sodium sulfates and carbonates.

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alkali flat British  

noun

1. an arid plain encrusted with alkaline salts derived from the streams draining into it

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Etymology

Origin of alkali flat

An Americanism dating back to 1870–75

Example Sentences

When I was overcome with exhaustion, my sway morphing into a semi-conscious stupor, I knew it was time to go — the only thing separating me from my air mattress being a vast alkali flat.

From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 10, 2023

Centuries of evaporation have transformed this ancient lake bed into a dry alkali flat, inhabited today by a migratory roost of 30,000 sandhill cranes.

From New York Times • Jul. 19, 2018

When the ceremony outgrew the beach, in the early 1990s, the burn was moved to a barren alkali flat in an empty corner of northwest Nevada.

From Slate • Aug. 27, 2012

What we see here is a typical alkali flat, left when melting snow water and spring rains had passed.

From Time Magazine Archive

One-half of that whole Nevada area was a great white blister, forty miles long and fifteen wide, acrid with alkali, flat, barren, and harsh as a sheet of zinc.

From Life at High Tide by Alden, Henry Mills