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

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 Hartmann, George (Henry George August)

Parts of our Arizona range were covered with great beds of broken malpais rock, really black lava, hard as iron, with edges sharp and jagged.

From Ranching, Sport and Travel by Carson, Thomas

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 Fewkes, Jesse Walter

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