What does "desert" mean?

Additional senses

1. 2.A deserted or forsaken region; a barren tract incapable of supporting population, as the vast sand plains of Asia and Africa are destitute and vegetation. A dreary desert and a gloomy waste. Pope.
2. 3.A tract, which may be capable of sustaining a population, but has been left unoccupied and uncultivated; a wilderness; a solitary place. He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord. Is. li.
3. 4.Note: Also figuratively. Before her extended Dreary and vast and silent, the desert of life. Longfellow.
4. 5.Of or pertaining to a desert; forsaken; without life or cultivation; unproductive; waste; barren; wild; desolate; solitary; as, they landed on a desert island. He . . . went aside privately into a desert place. Luke ix.
5. 6.Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. Gray. Desert flora (Bot.), the assemblage of plants growing naturally in a desert, or in a dry and apparently unproductive place. -- Desert hare (Zoöl.), a small hare (Lepus sylvaticus, var. Arizonæ) inhabiting the deserts of the Western United States. -- Desert mouse (Zoöl.), an American mouse (Hesperomys eremicus), living in the Western deserts.
6. 7.To leave (especially something which one should stay by and support); to leave in the lurch; to abandon; to forsake; -- implying blame, except sometimes when used of localities; as, to desert a friend, a principle, a cause, one's country. "The deserted fortress." Prescott.
7. 8.(Mil.) To abandon (the service) without leave; to forsake in violation of duty; to abscond from; as, to desert the army; to desert one's colors.
8. 9.To abandon a service without leave; to quit military service without permission, before the expiration of one's term; to abscond. The soldiers . . . deserted in numbers. Bancroft. See Abandon.