badlands

Etymology

From earlier Bad Lands, calque of Canadian French mauvaises terres à traverser (“bad lands to cross”), itself a calque of Lakota mako sica (“land bad”), synchronically equivalent to bad + lands.

noun

1. (geomorphology) An arid terrain characterized by severe erosion of sedimentary rocks.
   Not only do the Bad Lands present a most attractive field to the student of erosion and of the origin of earth forms, but their deathlike solitudes have been made to yield the most wonderful procession of strange extinct animals yet unearthed by geologists. 1904, Israel C. Russell, North America, New York: D. Appleton and Company, page 111