desiccate

He dedicated scarce water to building up agriculture, helping to desiccate the ancient Persian system of underground aqueduct-like canals known as qanats.

From New York Times ● Jun. 21, 2023

As Western drought and aridification desiccate soils, shrink mountain snowpack runoff and reduce river flows, irrigating alfalfa for dairy production will become more and more problematic.

From Salon ● Oct. 29, 2022

There's "a critical point", though, when the tree can't replenish the water lost through pores in the leaves and will "literally desiccate" or dry up.

From BBC ● Aug. 19, 2022

They desiccate when temperatures plummet, sidestepping the potential hazard of ice forming in their tissues.

From Washington Post ● Jul. 5, 2019

Now she seemed to desiccate by the moment.

From "The Girl Who Drank the Moon" by Kelly Barnhill

The sequence of a wet season that allows grasses to grow, followed by a dry spell that desiccates them, results in a particularly high fuel load for fires, Brewington said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 11, 2023

But if you make the walls too thin, your jack-o’-lantern’s fangs will become inward-curving skin tabs as the pulp desiccates and deforms.

From Scientific American ● Oct. 19, 2022

What remains on the landscape is a body of skin and bones that then slowly desiccates and deflates, eventually preserved for the eons.

From New York Times ● Oct. 12, 2022

Like a giant hair dryer, the wind desiccates everything in its path.

From Slate ● Nov. 20, 2018

The world hardens, narrows, desiccates common natures, but nothing so enriches generous ones.

From Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson by John Morley

Finally, Sen. Mitch McConnell’s desiccated remains returned to cast a vote in the Senate.

From Salon ● Sep. 18, 2026

The glare of the metal painted a mirage in the desiccated swap meet landscape, emitting an orb of heat and undeniable beauty.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 12, 2026

We drove past more empty lots, more abandoned groves, desiccated trees, signs announcing public hearings for land-use changes.

From Slate ● Apr. 20, 2026

It also got a reprieve in November, when Trump modified his executive order to exempt more than 100 food items from the tariffs—including the desiccated coconut Kesselhaut imports from the Philippines.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 31, 2026

“A raisin is simply a desiccated grape, ’’said Uncle Fester. desirable.

From "Woe Is I" by Patricia T. O'Conner

He says they were "like plastic...you could almost knock them...they were black, desiccating, clenched".

From BBC ● May 21, 2024

Thank you, Bill Burr, for sparing me from suffering through more than 90 minutes of Bill Maher’s desiccating “Club Random” podcast.

From Salon ● May 16, 2024

But in the dry volcanic valley, punished by sun and desiccating wind, the newcomers built virtually no homes.

From Seattle Times ● Oct. 3, 2022

So you may need to find an alternative way to keep your plants from desiccating in the summer sun.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 4, 2022

Composed of heat-resistant plastic and chemically treated cork layers, and equipped with a desiccating unit to keep the air bone-dry, the insosuits could withstand the full glare of Mercury’s sun for twenty minutes.

From "I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov