Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The solid ground of the earth.
  • noun Ground or soil.
  • noun A topographically or functionally distinct tract.
  • noun A nation; a country.
  • noun The people of a nation, district, or region.
  • noun Territorial possessions or property.
  • noun Public or private landed property; real estate.
  • noun Law The solid material of the earth as well as the natural and manmade things attached to it and the rights and interests associated with it.
  • noun An agricultural or farming area.
  • noun Farming considered as a way of life.
  • noun An area or realm.
  • noun The raised portion of a grooved surface, as on a phonograph record.
  • intransitive verb To bring to and unload on land.
  • intransitive verb To set (a vehicle) down on land or another surface.
  • intransitive verb Informal To cause to arrive in a place or condition.
  • intransitive verb To catch and pull in (a fish).
  • intransitive verb Informal To win; secure.
  • intransitive verb Informal To deliver.
  • intransitive verb To come to shore.
  • intransitive verb To disembark.
  • intransitive verb To descend toward and settle onto the ground or another surface.
  • intransitive verb Informal To arrive in a place or condition.
  • intransitive verb To come to rest in a certain way or place.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Urine.
  • noun The solid substance of the earth's surface; any part of the continuous surface of the solid materials constituting the body of the globe: as, dry or submerged land; mountain or desert land.
  • noun The exposed part of the earth's surface, as distinguished from the submerged part; dry or solid ground: as, to travel by land and water; to spy land from the masthead.
  • noun A part of the earth's surface distinguished in any way from other parts; a country, division, or tract considered as the home of a person or a people, or marked off by ethnical, physical, or moral characteristics: as, one's native land; the land of the midnight sun; the land of the citron and myrtle.
  • noun The country; the rural regions; in general, distant regions.
  • noun Ground considered as a subject of use or possession; earth; soil.
  • noun A strip of land left unbroken in a plowed field; the space between two furrows.
  • noun Hence That part of the inner surface of a rifle which lies between the grooves.
  • noun In a millstone, the plane surface between two furrows.
  • noun The smooth uncut part of the face-plate of a slide-valve in a steam-engine.
  • noun The lap of the strakes in a clincher-built boat. Also called landing.
  • noun In some cities in Scotland, a group of separate dwellings under one roof and having a common entry; a dwelling-house divided into tenements for different families, each tenement being called a house, and the whole a land, or a land of houses.
  • noun See laund.
  • To put on or bring to shore; disembark; debark; transfer to land in any way: as, to land troops or goods; to land a fish.
  • Hence To bring to a point of stoppage or rest; bring to the end of a journey, or a course of any kind.
  • Nautical, to rest, as a cask or spar, on the deck or elsewhere, by lowering with a rope or tackle.
  • To go ashore from a ship or boat; disembark.
  • To come to land or shore; touch at a wharf or other landing-place, as a boat or steamer.
  • To arrive; come to a stop: as, I landed at his house: the wagon landed in a ditch.
  • noun One of the strips into which a field is divided in plowing: same as ridge, 3. See quotation under cut, 24. Compare dead furrow.
  • noun Uncultivated land subject to taxation.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English; see lendh- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English land, lond, from Old English land, lond ("earth, land, soil, ground; defined piece of land, territory, realm, province, district; landed property; country (not town); ridge in a ploughed field"), from Proto-Germanic *landan (“land”), from Proto-Indo-European *lendʰ- (“land, heath”). Cognate with Scots land ("land"), West Frisian lân ("land"), Dutch land ("land"), German Land ("land, country, state"), Swedish land ("land, country, shore, territory"), Icelandic land ("land"). Non-Germanic cognates include Old Irish lann ("heath"), Welsh llan ("enclosure"), Breton lann ("heath"), Old Church Slavonic lędо from Proto-Slavic *lendо (“heath, wasteland”) and Albanian lëndinë ("heath, grassland") from lëndë ("matter, substance").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word land.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.