Definitions

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

  • noun A flat area, typically lying between a desert and an ocean or salt lake, whose surface is characterized by efflorescences of salt, gypsum, and calcium carbonate as well as windblown sediments and often tidal deposits.

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

  • noun An area of coastal salt flats, especially in North Africa and Arabia.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Arabic sabaḫa, sabḫa, salt marsh, sabkha, sabiḫa, to rest; see šbḫ in Semitic roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Arabic سبخة ‘salt flat’.

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Examples

  • I'm surrounded by dense foliage -- sabkha and mizren trees, mostly, but there are also lots of the bofra trees that remind me of feather dusters, and groves of the alkamaar trees that yield an edible fruit which looks like a date but tastes like a blueberry.

    Analog Science Fiction and Fact 2004

  • (Chald. sabkha; Gr. sambuke), a Syrian stringed instrument resembling a harp (Dan. 3: 5, 7, 10, 15); not the modern sackbut, which is a wind instrument.

    Easton's Bible Dictionary M.G. Easton 1897

  • Occasionally, the rutted tracks of a 4x4 cut through the sabkha - the soft and salty crust of quicksand tables that lie at the lowest troughs of the mountainous dunes - the vehicles invisible or long gone.

    unknown title 2009

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