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.Compare pampas, savanna, steppe.
a tract of grassland; meadow.
(in Florida) a low, sandy tract of grassland often covered with water.
Southern U.S.wet grassland; marsh.
(initial capital letter)a steam locomotive having a two-wheeled front truck, six driving wheels, and a two-wheeled rear truck.
Origin of prairie
1675–85; < French: meadow < Vulgar Latin*prātāria, equivalent to Latinprāt(um) meadow + -āria, feminine of -ārius-ary
Related formsprai·rie·like, adjective
Prairie, The
noun
a historical novel (1827) by James Fenimore Cooper.
tract of level or undulating grassland in North America, by 1773, from French prairie "meadow, grassland," from Old French praerie "meadow, pastureland" (12c.), from Vulgar Latin *prataria, from Latin pratum "meadow," originally "a hollow." The word existed in Middle English as prayere, but was lost and reborrowed to describe the American plains. Prairie dog is attested from 1774; prairie schooner "immigrant's wagon" is from 1841. Illinois has been the Prairie State since at least 1861. In Latin, Neptunia prata was poetic for "the sea."
