Prairie

Prairie

Noun · /ˈprɛːri/ · a large open area of flat or rolling grassland, especially in North America

Definition

A prairie is a vast expanse of flat or gently rolling grassland with few or no trees, typically rich in grasses and wildflowers. The word refers primarily to the great interior plains of North America — stretching from Canada south through the United States — but is also used for any similar open grassland landscape. Prairies were once the dominant biome of central North America, covering hundreds of millions of acres before agriculture transformed them.

Origin

From French prairie — meadow, grassland — from Old French praerie, from Medieval Latin prataria, from Latin pratum meaning meadow. French explorers and settlers carried the word into English as they moved through the interior of North America in the 17th and 18th centuries. The word was initially a French word used by English speakers to describe what they saw — a landscape so vast and treeless that no existing English word quite captured it.