ranch
Americannoun
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ranches
plural
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an establishment maintained for raising livestock under range conditions.
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Chiefly Western U.S. and Canada. a large farm used primarily to raise one kind of crop or animal.
a mink ranch.
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a dude ranch.
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the persons employed or living on a ranch.
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I’ll have the small salad, with ranch on the side.
verb (used without object)
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ranches,
present (3rd person singular)
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ranched,
past participle, past
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ranching
present participle
noun
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a large tract of land, esp one in North America, together with the necessary personnel, buildings, and equipment, for rearing livestock, esp cattle
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any large farm for the rearing of a particular kind of livestock or crop
a mink ranch
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the buildings, land, etc, connected with it
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verb
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(intr) to manage or run a ranch
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(tr) to raise (animals) on or as if on a ranch
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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ranchsimple
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ranchessimple
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have ranchedperfect
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has ranchedperfect
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am ranchingprogressive
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are ranchingprogressive
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is ranchingprogressive
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have been ranchingperfect progressive
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has been ranchingperfect progressive
Past
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ranchedsimple
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had ranchedperfect
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was ranchingprogressive
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were ranchingprogressive
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had been ranchingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of ranch
An Americanism dating from 1800–10; from Spanish rancho “farm, cattle farm, ranch”; see origin at rancho
Explanation
A ranch is a large farm that raises animals, generally grazing animals like cows or sheep. If you dream of raising big, strange-looking birds, you could decide to have an emu or an ostrich ranch instead. Ranches raise animals for meat, and in the case of sheep or alpacas, for wool. When you work on a ranch, you can say that you ranch. A ranch is also a type of single-story, simple house architecturally influenced by the western, informal style of working ranches, which first appeared in the 1950s in the Western US. Ranch comes from the Spanish rancho, first "group of people who eat together" and later "group of farm huts."
Vocabulary lists containing ranch
Australia and New Zealand - Introductory
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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:
Then this year, the two remaining ranch and dairy families sued.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 16, 2026
By the first week of January, she moved her belongings into a rented stationary camper situated on a ranch owner’s sprawling land, that they’d lived on for more than 25 years.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 14, 2026
However, according to the property’s listing, they have now decided to move closer to the action of Aspen and no longer have a need for their ranch.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 12, 2026
The ranch is home to the 10,000-Year-Clock, which is designed to keep time for 10,000 years and helped Sanchez think about her future with Bezos, according to Vogue.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 10, 2026
I can never decide which I like more: ranch or marinara.
From "Free Lunch" by Rex Ogle
Ken Boulay, the CEO of the Turtle Island Restoration Network, said it’s time to move forward and imagine what the park could be like without cattle and private ranches.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 16, 2026
As those ranches disappeared, so did the local economies that made America’s cattle country strong.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 30, 2026
“God bless her. She let me go out and live on ranches and run with other people to get away from him.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 24, 2026
A conservationist, Turner owned and operated 13 ranches that were home to roughly 45,000 bison, Turner Enterprises said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 8, 2026
“I seen the guys that go around on the ranches alone. That ain’t no good. They don’t have no fun. After a long time they get mean. They get wantin’ to fight all the time.”
From "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck
This weekend, the delegation from Hidden Valley has been mobilized to the New York area—because anything can be ranched.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026
In the 1880s, Theodore Roosevelt hunted and ranched as a young man in the Badlands of what is now western North Dakota.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 25, 2023
These ancient wetlands had been plundered for timber, then ranched, and finally acquired by the state in the 1970s to nurture back to life.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 20, 2021
When Letseoma was growing up in this house, her father had farmed and ranched and had owned horses, cattle, sheep, and chickens.
From Slate ● Jan. 29, 2021
As Grandpa got older he ranched less and farmed more, until one day he stopped farming.
From "Educated" by Tara Westover
Namgyal worked in Alaska, New York City and finally Colorado, the place most resembling Nepal and the epicenter of yak ranching in the United States.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 8, 2026
The show depicts the power struggles between patriarch John Dutton III, his children, the locals, and the outsiders seeking to change their bucolic ranching way of life.
From BBC ● Jul. 18, 2026
The practice of ranching can be traced back about 75 years to the man who had a brilliant idea to combine mayonnaise, buttermilk, herbs and spices.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026
The U.S. urgently needs a cattle policy worthy of its ranching tradition.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 30, 2026
Congress effectively outlawed their communal property, passing vast acreages into the public domain, tracts which then suddenly wound up in the hands of large American ranching enterprises like the Devine Company.
From "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols
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.
