deforestation
- 01 B2 Upper Intermediate
the act of cutting down or burning all the trees in an area, often to use the land for farming or cattle.
the permanent removal of trees to make land available for other uses, such as agriculture, ranching, or urban sprawl. Uncountable in its general sense; countable when referring to specific instances or regions.
Simple“Deforestation in the Amazon is a major cause of climate change.”
In context“Environmental scientists argue that rapid deforestation leads to significant biodiversity loss and disrupts local water cycles.”
Synonymsclear cuttingloggingAntonymsafforestationreforestation - 02 C2 Proficiency
a way to make computer programs run faster by removing extra steps that the computer does not need.
a program transformation technique that eliminates intermediate data structures to improve computational efficiency. Also known as fusion.
Simple“The developer used deforestation to make the code run more efficiently.”
In context“In functional programming, deforestation is a compiler optimization that fuses functions together to avoid the overhead of creating temporary lists.”
Synonyms
“Many diamond frogs live in forests that are becoming increasingly fragmented by deforestation.”
“Expanding avocado plantations can increase water pollution and drive deforestation if there is no incentive to clean up production.”
From deforest + -ation. First attested in 1870.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.