pampas
Americanplural noun
-
pampa
singular
noun
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of pampas
First recorded in 1695–1705; from Latin American Spanish, plural of pampa, from Quechua: “flat, unbounded plain”
Explanation
If you travel to Argentina, you may have a chance to visit the pampas, the fertile lowlands that cover part of South America. This noun is of American Spanish origin and ultimately from Quechua in the central Andes mountains in South America. Argentina is the country that is home to more pampas (treeless, grassy plains) than any other. The pampas may seem rather empty without the occasional gaucho, a cowboy of the pampas, and yet another word of South American Spanish origin.
Vocabulary lists containing pampas
South America - Middle School
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South America - High School
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2015 Spelling Bee - Words from Round 2
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
On the pampas they may have been equally valued for their relatively fatty meat.
From Science Magazine ● Dec. 7, 2023
Years ago, when he read Bruce Chatwin’s “In Patagonia,” he retraced the writer’s 168-mile trek across the pampas of South America to the Cave of the Giant Sloth.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 3, 2023
Outside the city, on the broad and dusty plain of the pampas, is the landscape that provides the country its power.
From New York Times ● Oct. 5, 2022
It was brought to Argentina's sprawling plains, or pampas, by British immigrants in the late 1800s, where it found a home alongside the South American country's iconic gaucho cowboys.
From Reuters ● Apr. 12, 2022
In the pampas of Argentina and Uruguay, the voyaging Charles Darwin discovered hundreds of square miles strangled by feral artichoke.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
All were European technologies or trade goods adapted by locals on the Patagonian pampa.
From Science Magazine ● Dec. 7, 2023
The tail zigged and zagged through the wet pampa.
From Scientific American ● Feb. 22, 2013
For Russia had sent a trade delegation to Buenos Aires presumably to offer Soviet tractors, trucks and combines for wool, hides, and blooded pampa bulls to build up Russia's war-depleted herds.
From Time Magazine Archive
But most Yankees of the U.S. know less about Latin America's most bustling country, its 13,518,239 people and the riches of its fabulously fertile "humid pampa" than they know about Novosibirsk.
From Time Magazine Archive
In latitude 27° it turns abruptly to the west, as if about to cross the pampa, but a hundred miles farther on it resumes its southward course.
From The South American Republics Part I of II by Thomas C. Dawson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
