Arid

How to spell arid

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce arid

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does arid mean?

1. adjectiveSo dry and lacking in moisture that little or nothing can grow.
2. adjectiveLacking interest, warmth, or vitality; dull and unstimulating.

Arid in a sentence

• The arid plateau receives barely any rain all year.

• The report was an arid list of figures with no analysis.

• Farmers struggle to grow crops in such arid soil.

• Students found the lecture arid and hard to follow.

Where does arid come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes directly from the Latin adjective aridus, which meant 'dry' or 'parched'. That form was built on the verb arere, meaning 'to be dry' or 'to wither', the same root that lies behind the Latin word for an altar (ara), originally a place where offerings were burned to ash. English adopted arid in the early 1600s, at first describing genuinely waterless land such as deserts and droughts, and the spelling has stayed remarkably stable ever since. Over time the sense broadened to a figurative one, so that a dull lecture or a lifeless piece of writing could be called arid because it seemed dry and lacking in vitality. The single r and single d are the main thing to watch, since the brisk two-syllable word tempts some writers to double a letter that was never doubled in Latin.

How the word is built

• arid (from Latin aridus: dry, parched, from arere: to be dry)