pampas
Americanplural noun
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:
Whereas glass scrapers were an incremental improvement over flint and obsidian, the introduction of the horse sparked a profound shift on the open grasslands, or pampas, of Patagonia.
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
Some made their homes in the river world of the Amazon basin, others struck roots in Andean mountain valleys or the open pampas of Argentina.
From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari
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
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
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
By 1580 they controlled the Paraná River from its confluence with the Paraguay to the ocean, had established Santa Fé and Buenos Aires on its right bank, and opened up the southern pampa.
From The South American Republics Part I of II by Dawson, Thomas C.
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.
