PRAIRIE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does prairie mean? 

• PRAIRIE (noun)
  The noun PRAIRIE has 1 sense:

1. a treeless grassy plain

  Familiarity information: PRAIRIE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PRAIRIE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A treeless grassy plain

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Hypernyms ("prairie" is a kind of...):

grassland (land where grass or grasslike vegetation grows and is the dominant form of plant life)

Instance hyponyms:

Great Plains; Great Plains of North America (a vast prairie region extending from Alberta and Saskatchewan and Manitoba in Canada south through the west central United States into Texas; formerly inhabited by Native Americans)

 Context examples 

We've told yarns by the camp-fire in the prairies; and dressed one another's wounds after trying a landing at the Marquesas; and drunk healths on the shore of Titicaca.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

In 2003, it was reported in prairie dogs and humans in the U.S.

(Monkeypox Virus Infections, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

"Your deer are much prettier than our ugly buffaloes," she said, turning to the prairies for help and feeling glad that she had read one of the boys' books in which Jo delighted.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

For she was sitting on the broad Kansas prairie, and just before her was the new farmhouse Uncle Henry built after the cyclone had carried away the old one.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

A little way off was a small brook, rushing and sparkling along between green banks, and murmuring in a voice very grateful to a little girl who had lived so long on the dry, gray prairies.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

That's my middle west—not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns but the thrilling, returning trains of my youth and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)