Definition of "geest" [geest]

• A type of slightly raised landscape, with sandy and gravelly soils, that occurs in the plains of Northern Germany, the Northern Netherlands and Denmark. (noun)

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• "The slight elevations of sandy "geest" or detrital spurs were limited in area and in time outgrown."
• "German lowlands; here the sandy barren flats of the "geest" alternate with stretches of fertile silt deposited by the rivers or the sea, [212] and support different types of communities, which have been admirably described by Gustav Frenssen in his great novel of Jön Uhl. The flat surface of southern Illinois shows in small compass the teeming fertility of the famous "American bottom," the poor clay soil of "Egypt" with its backward population, and the rich prairie land just to the north with its prosperous and progressive farmer class."
• ""geest," and finally in low German, "yest"; and that word you know is the word our Saxon forefathers used, and is almost the same as the word which is commonly employed in this country to denote the common ferment of which I have been speaking."