How to Use desiccate in a Sentence

desiccate

verb
  • The grass will grow like crazy when the rains come, then quickly desiccate when the landscape dries.
    — WIRED, 10 Aug. 2023
  • This will protect the flower buds from the strong winds which can desiccate them.
    — Dave Epstein, BostonGlobe.com, 30 Jan. 2023
  • The idea that they were buried under the sand and desiccated and lacking any sort of moisture.
    — Joanna Robinson, VanityFair.com, 3 Apr. 2017
  • Edward is in the grip of a grotesque malady that causes his flesh to desiccate and slough away.
    — Sam Sacks, WSJ, 17 June 2022
  • The veld looked like the giant desiccated hide of some ancient creature, skinned and scarred and skeletal.
    — Stanley Stewart, Condé Nast Traveler, 21 Dec. 2018
  • Many of us live on patches of ground that look as desiccated as that roof Novak started with.
    — Dominique Browning, New York Times, 1 June 2016
  • Rainy winters and springs encourage the growth of plants, which desiccate in the dry summer and turn into fuel.
    — Wired, 21 July 2022
  • The mountains here are steep, desiccated, and flat-out savage.
    — Aaron Gulley, Outside Online, 16 Apr. 2018
  • The mountains here are steep, desiccated, and flat-out savage.
    — Aaron Gulley, Outside Online, 16 Apr. 2018
  • Pipe a line of frosting around the hat and sprinkle with nonpareils or desiccated coconut.
    — Woman's Day Kitchen, Woman's Day, 30 Nov. 2018
  • Pipe a line of frosting around the hat and sprinkle with nonpareils or desiccated coconut.
    — Woman's Day Kitchen, Woman's Day, 30 Nov. 2018
  • Wood releases most of its moisture through its end grain, and both types of stacks expose the wood to capitalize on the heat of the sun and desiccating breezes.
    — Roy Berendsohn, Popular Mechanics, 28 Sep. 2018
  • Slicing through valleys, the winds gather more speed, desiccating the air.
    — Wired, 8 Oct. 2019
  • The British upper classes and a farmer's bum laid bare, as the Norfolk countryside slowly desiccates.
    — The Week Uk, theweek, 20 Dec. 2024
  • The mocking laughter of the servant Lesbus, and the grim image of the dead and desiccated Roman wolf that descends behind him, seem more like their curse.
    — James Romm, The New York Review of Books, 1 Mar. 2020
  • The tough skin, with scales made out of the same material as your fingernails, was able to desiccate and stand a better chance of being buried with the animal’s bones.
    — Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 11 Jan. 2024
  • The weather this year has also left abundant vegetation in the region that has desiccated in the warm, dry air.
    — Umair Irfan, Vox, 7 Dec. 2018
  • A few weeks later, a reporter found Rippee at a Vallejo strip mall, asleep on a patch of concrete littered with dirty socks and desiccated orange peels.
    — Jocelyn Wiener, SFChronicle.com, 4 Jan. 2020
  • Experts have been predicting an active second half of the year in the late summer and early fall, when plants that were once green and healthy will brown and desiccate in the longer, hotter days of summer.
    — Grace Toohey, Los Angeles Times, 22 June 2024
  • Plants were torn from their homes and those that remained had most of their foliage almost instantly desiccated.
    — Paul Cappiello, The Courier-Journal, 2 Feb. 2018
  • Plants were torn from their homes and those that remained had most of their foliage almost instantly desiccated.
    — Paul Cappiello, The Courier-Journal, 2 Feb. 2018
  • Scientific efforts to rule the rain began in the United States sometime during the late 1800s, when a series of droughts desiccated great swaths of the nation.
    — Maya Wei-Haas, Smithsonian, 19 Oct. 2017
  • The American landscape is littered with the husks of news outlets desiccated by the migration of life-giving attention from a page that folds to a page that glows.
    — Karl Vick, Time, 10 Oct. 2019
  • The giraffe—looking desiccated but not disfigured—was put on display in a clear, airless box.
    — Ian Parker, The New Yorker, 16 Jan. 2017
  • In that sense, the beige tone of Mr. Mueller’s report — that desiccating bureaucratese denying the events their juice and soundbite-ability — is something of a radical act in this day and age.
    — James Poniewozik, New York Times, 25 June 2019
  • There are bigger problems in the world and in the desiccated, creaking husk that is the Democrats’ political infrastructure.
    — Jesse Singal, Daily Intelligencer, 31 Oct. 2017
  • In Uzbekistan, the entire eastern basin of the South Aral Sea is completely desiccated, leaving merely a single strip of water in the west.
    — Taylor Weidman, National Geographic, 16 Mar. 2018
  • Last week my doctor switched me to Armour desiccated thyroid.
    — Teresa Graedon, The Seattle Times, 25 Feb. 2018
  • An agricultural fair in Zambia’s Mumbwa district is a three-hour drive from Lusaka, much of it through maize fields desiccated by drought.
    — The Economist, 22 Aug. 2019
  • Those hot days are blamed in part for desiccating the region’s foliage, essentially preparing the area for this month’s wildfires.
    — Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, 17 Oct. 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'desiccate.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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