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

Still in low we climbed out of the malpais.

From The Killer by White, Stewart Edward

Ditto or unfinished mortar of the malpais for grinding chili and other ingredients for sauce.

From Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections Obtained from the Pueblos of Zuñi, New Mexico, and Wolpi, Arizona, in 1881 Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1881-82, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1884, pages 511-594 by Stevenson, James

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

From Oh, You Tex! by Raine, William MacLeod

But the boys they knew of an old black steer, A sort of an old outlaw That ran down in the malpais At the foot of a rocky draw.

From Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads by Various

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