Fertile Crescent

American  

noun

1. an agricultural region extending from the Levant to Iraq.

2. an area in the Middle East: formerly fertile, now partly desert.

---

Fertile Crescent British  

noun

1. an area of fertile land in the Middle East, extending around the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates in a semicircle from Israel to the Persian Gulf, where the Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Phoenician, and Hebrew civilizations flourished

---

Etymology

Origin of Fertile Crescent

First recorded in 1910–15

Example Sentences

By examining genetic material preserved in bones and teeth, his team is tracing how domesticated animals such as cattle, goats and sheep spread from the Fertile Crescent across Eurasia.

From Science Daily • Mar. 7, 2026

This practice of ritual burial is believed to have originated among early Neolithic groups in the "Fertile Crescent" - a region encompassing parts of modern-day Turkey, Israel, Syria and Lebanon - before gradually spreading westward.

From BBC • Dec. 29, 2024

Civilization began in the Fertile Crescent about 10,000 years ago, when people first settled into villages and started growing food.

From Salon • Aug. 11, 2023

High temperatures and scarce water are drying out swaths of Iraq that were once part of a verdant region known as the Fertile Crescent.

From New York Times • Aug. 1, 2023

The sphinx and pyramids were built by people fed on crops originally native to the Fertile Crescent, not to Egypt.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond