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

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

Museum curators tasked with preserving plastic artifacts know all too well that plastics discolor, desiccate, fissure and fracture, undergoing a range of physical changes, including becoming micro- and even nano-scaled particles.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 14, 2022

It is a combination of two things: a lack of rain and those thirsty atmospheric conditions that desiccate the landscape.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 25, 2021

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 rapid evaporation quickly dispels the vapors and the dry heat desiccates the disease creating germs and makes them innocuous.

From Arizona Sketches by J. A. (Joseph Amasa) Munk

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

From Salon ● Sep. 18, 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

"Everything is there. I was stuck here," he told AFP in Karachi, near the well-known Bengali market where he peddles desiccated fish and prawns to make ends meet for $7 to $9 per day.

From Barron's ● Feb. 23, 2026

The country surrounding Davis Gulch is a desiccated expanse of bald rock and brick-red sand.

From "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer

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

The decline of the Salton Sea, however, does not mean Southern California will forever be protected against a San Andreas earthquake as long as that area is desiccating.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 9, 2023

Hotter conditions have also caused more moisture to evaporate from the landscape, desiccating croplands and causing millions of livestock to starve.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 27, 2023

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