prairie

American  

[prair-ee] / ˈprɛər i /

noun

prairies plural

1. an extensive, level or slightly undulating, mostly treeless tract of land in the Mississippi valley, characterized by a highly fertile soil and originally covered with coarse grasses, and merging into drier plateaus in the west.

2. a tract of grassland; meadow.

3. (in Florida) a low, sandy tract of grassland often covered with water.

4. Southern U.S. wet grassland; marsh.

5. (initial capital letter) a steam locomotive having a two-wheeled front truck, six driving wheels, and a two-wheeled rear truck.

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prairie British  

/ ˈprɛərɪ /

noun

1. (often plural) a treeless grassy plain of the central US and S Canada Compare pampas steppe savanna

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prairie Scientific  

/ prâr′ē /

1. An extensive area of flat or rolling grassland, especially the large plain of central North America.

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• prairielike
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• prairies
  plural

Etymology

Origin of prairie

1675–85; < French: meadow < Vulgar Latin *prātāria, equivalent to Latin prāt ( um ) meadow + -āria, feminine of -ārius -ary

Explanation

A prairie is a plain of grassy land without many trees. If you're raising cattle, find some prairie land to let them roam around on. Prairie means grassland, and comes from the French word for "meadow." While we might describe a single meadow, we usually use prairie to describe a type of countryside. In the United States, the natural state of the land between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains is prairie, which is why there's so much farming there.

Example Sentences

Prairie vole pairs are able to bond in the absence of oxytocin, though, indicating that other pathways may kick in.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 19, 2026

“My job is to find opportunities,” says Michael Prairie, the hockey franchise’s head of sustainability.

From Barron's • Jun. 17, 2026

Then, in February 1993, a Vietnam veteran named Robert William Hardee was arrested in Grand Prairie, a Dallas suburb that borders Arlington.

From Slate • Apr. 6, 2026

She renders the fearless quality of Gehry’s work in vivid verbs, pointing out that if Wright “broke open the box in his Prairie homes, Frank Gehry has ruptured the building-as-box completely—destroyed it in fact.”

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 24, 2026

Though we lived on the edge of what was termed an upper-middle-class neighborhood—Eden Prairie, Minnesota—our house was small, a “fixer-upper” when my folks bought it four years ago.

From "Lawn Boy" by Gary Paulsen

Related Words

• meadow
• pasture
• plain
• savanna
• steppe