prairie
Americannoun
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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.
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a tract of grassland; meadow.
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(in Florida) a low, sandy tract of grassland often covered with water.
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Southern U.S. wet grassland; marsh.
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(initial capital letter) a steam locomotive having a two-wheeled front truck, six driving wheels, and a two-wheeled rear truck.
noun
Other Word Forms
- prairielike adjective
Etymology
Origin of prairie
1675–85; < French: meadow < Vulgar Latin *prātāria, equivalent to Latin prāt ( um ) meadow + -āria, feminine of -ārius -ary
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.
Once out of the prairie in western Minnesota, the scenery got more conventional, with more towns, as well as larger cities.
From Los Angeles Times
He said Thor is located on prairie farmland in central Saskatchewan, close to the geographic center of North America and nearby access to freight-rail lines operated by Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Kansas City.
One of Canada's main objectives during this trip is to ease Chinese tariffs on Canadian canola that have hurt farmers in the country's prairie provinces.
From BBC
We climbed aboard the clattering omnibus just as it pulled up, and it carried us all the way to the southern edge of the city, where the prairie grasses grew tall and abundant.
From Literature
Curling was born in Scotland in the early 16th century but grew up centuries later on the Canadian prairies, where the severe weather, rural landscape and boredom provided fertile ground.
From Los Angeles Times
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.
