terra
Americannoun
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terras
plural
noun
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A rough highland or mountainous region of the moon with a relatively high albedo.
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Compare mare
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A vast highland region on a planet.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of terra
Borrowed into English from Latin around 1605–15
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:
The kitchen floor suddenly terra incognita, Jack looked to me across the table for help.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 26, 2026
The fact that scientists are finding intact biochar in the Amazon’s ancient terra preta suggests that it’s happening.
From Salon ● Mar. 7, 2025
They came in a small range of colors: sand, terra cotta, chestnut.
From Slate ● Oct. 20, 2024
That would only have been possible on terra firma, they say.
From Science Magazine ● Apr. 30, 2024
As they says in that old joke, the more firma, the less terra!
From "The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury
He began again, starting with Juno’s unforgiving cruelty, sweeping into the cave of winds, and finally breaking into the storm: ruunt et terras turbine perflant.
From "Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy" by Gary D. Schmidt
It was the voice of warning which he ever heard repeating to him the words— Heu, fuge crudeles terras, fuge litus avarum687.
From The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil by W. Y. Sellar
A few steps up from the zaguan was a cosy parlour from which a stair led down to the terras.
From The Fortunate Isles Life and Travel in Majorca, Minorca and Iviza by Mary Stuart Boyd
“I have preserved it,” he said, “for I am pleased with the gracious terras in which it is couched.”
From The Trapper's Son by William Henry Giles Kingston
Such landslides, terras 230 cahidas, can be rarely foreseen, and are a grave danger to craft when they come close in to rest at night.
From The Sea and the Jungle by H. M. (Henry Major) Tomlinson
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.
