sere - Word for the Day, Wednesday, 6 October 2004

sere, also sear · SiiR · adjective

:dry; withered.

. . . a country that has been transformed from a place of
lush abundance to a sere, mutilated, inhospitable land.
--Zofia Smardz, "A Nice Place for Extinction," New York
Times, June 15, 1997

Recent rains have done little to relieve the sere
conditions.
--Thomas Omestad, "The struggle over water," U.S. News
and World Report, April 10, 2000

Mr. Campbell, a biologist, spent three seasons in the
Antarctic and returned with eerily clear perceptions of
that sere and uninhabitable place.
--Review of The Crystal Desert, by David G. Campbell; New
York Times, December 5, 1993

There was a lavatory at the end of the garden beyond a
scraggy clump of Michaelmas daisies that never looked well
in themselves, always sere, never blooming, the perennial
ghosts of themselves, as if ill-nourished by an exhausted
soil.
--Angela Carter, Shaking a Leg

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Sere comes from Old English sear, "dry."