malpais

American  

[mahl-pah-ees] / ˌmɑl pɑˈis /

noun

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

---

Etymology

Origin of malpais

1835–45, < Spanish mal país bad country

---

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

malpais

After the road from old Camp Verde to Flagstaff passes a deserted cabin at Beaver Head, it winds up a steep hill of lava or malpais to the top of the Mogollones.

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 Jesse Walter Fewkes

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

Into water-gutted arroyos they descended, slid down breakneck shale ridges, climbed like heather cats the banks of dry washes, pounded over white porous malpais on which no vegetation grew.

From Oh, You Tex! by William MacLeod Raine

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 Jesse Walter Fewkes

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 George (Henry George August) Hartmann

Random Word

Spin the wheel and learn a new word!

---