How to Use desiccate in a Sentence

desiccate

verb
  • Her flesh is desiccated and gray, her hands and feet are jagged claws, and her breath comes out in rasps.
    — Alison Willmore, Vulture, 17 Apr. 2026
  • This will protect the flower buds from the strong winds which can desiccate them.
    — Dave Epstein, BostonGlobe.com, 30 Jan. 2023
  • The grass will grow like crazy when the rains come, then quickly desiccate when the landscape dries.
    — WIRED, 10 Aug. 2023
  • Edward is in the grip of a grotesque malady that causes his flesh to desiccate and slough away.
    — Sam Sacks, WSJ, 17 June 2022
  • The idea that they were buried under the sand and desiccated and lacking any sort of moisture.
    — Joanna Robinson, VanityFair.com, 3 Apr. 2017
  • The mountains here are steep, desiccated, and flat-out savage.
    — Aaron Gulley, Outside Online, 16 Apr. 2018
  • Dried or desiccated coconut flakes can be replaced with fresh coconut meat, or omit.
    — The Washington Post, San Diego Union-Tribune, 11 Mar. 2026
  • Many of us live on patches of ground that look as desiccated as that roof Novak started with.
    — Dominique Browning, New York Times, 1 June 2016
  • Pipe a line of frosting around the hat and sprinkle with nonpareils or desiccated coconut.
    — Woman's Day Kitchen, Woman's Day, 30 Nov. 2018
  • Any cell drifting in the skies is blasted with UV rays and desiccated.
    — Katherine Bourzac, Quanta Magazine, 15 Sep. 2025
  • Slicing through valleys, the winds gather more speed, desiccating the air.
    — Wired, 8 Oct. 2019
  • Rainy winters and springs encourage the growth of plants, which desiccate in the dry summer and turn into fuel.
    — Wired, 21 July 2022
  • Plants were torn from their homes and those that remained had most of their foliage almost instantly desiccated.
    — Paul Cappiello, The Courier-Journal, 2 Feb. 2018
  • Klosterman wondered if the recent heatwave would desiccate them.
    — Lila Seidman, Los Angeles Times, 26 Mar. 2026
  • Mahdi and Khadija had been struck by drought, and their bed was dry and desiccated, waterless down to its depths.
    — Literary Hub, 12 Mar. 2026
  • Last week my doctor switched me to Armour desiccated thyroid.
    — Teresa Graedon, The Seattle Times, 25 Feb. 2018
  • Salt products desiccate grass, and freeze/thaw cycles cause frost heaving, leaving lumpy, uneven areas.
    — Barbara Gillette, The Spruce, 13 Jan. 2026
  • The giraffe—looking desiccated but not disfigured—was put on display in a clear, airless box.
    — Ian Parker, The New Yorker, 16 Jan. 2017
  • Scales form over buds to protect them from desiccating or drying out, and from freezing temperatures.
    — Bonnie Blodgett, Twin Cities, 14 Jan. 2017
  • The weather this year has also left abundant vegetation in the region that has desiccated in the warm, dry air.
    — Umair Irfan, Vox, 7 Dec. 2018
  • Try to get a look below the surface—if anything is broken, damaged, rotten, or desiccated, a simple trim could help.
    — Ashley Chalmers, The Spruce, 11 Feb. 2026
  • Wood releases most of its moisture through its end grain, and both types of stacks expose the wood to capitalize on the heat of the sun and desiccating breezes.
    — Roy Berendsohn, Popular Mechanics, 28 Sep. 2018
  • Instead, the Dudok projected a lean smooth sound, neither desiccated nor sharp-edged.
    — Alan Artner, chicagotribune.com, 13 Jan. 2018
  • Those hot days are blamed in part for desiccating the region’s foliage, essentially preparing the area for this month’s wildfires.
    — Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, 17 Oct. 2017
  • Earth’s atmosphere has a habit of desiccating things, after all, so plants evolved something called cutin, a waxy barrier against the elements.
    — Matt Simon, WIRED, 21 June 2018
  • The tough skin, with scales made out of the same material as your fingernails, was able to desiccate and stand a better chance of being buried with the animal’s bones.
    — Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 11 Jan. 2024
  • Tinder-dry vegetation has blown into power lines, sparking fires fanned by high winds across a landscape desiccated from drought and climate change.
    — Washington Post, 13 Nov. 2019
  • Experts have been predicting an active second half of the year in the late summer and early fall, when plants that were once green and healthy will brown and desiccate in the longer, hotter days of summer.
    — Grace Toohey, Los Angeles Times, 22 June 2024
  • The preceding year, a wet winter led to an ample early-season bloom of vegetation that soon desiccated in the hot, dry spring and summer months that followed.
    — Umair Irfan, Vox, 29 May 2024
  • For their study, researchers analyzed active and desiccated tardigrades across a timespans ranging between one and 48 hours.
    — Daisy Hernandez, Popular Mechanics, 16 Jan. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'desiccate.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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