Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • A vast desert of northern Africa extending east from the Atlantic coast to the Red Sea and south from the Atlas Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea to the Sahel. About 5,000 to 10,000 years ago, the Sahara was a region of savanna vegetation and extensive surface water, most of which had disappeared by Roman times. Introduction of the camel (probably in the first century AD) led to occupation by nomadic tribes who moved from oasis to oasis in search of water.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun A desert in North Africa, the largest hot desert in the world.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the world's largest desert (3,500,000 square miles) in northern Africa

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Arabic صحراء “desert” (Sahara Desert is thus a pleonasm.)

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