Definitions

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

  • noun An area of land; ground.
  • noun A particular geographic area; a region.
  • noun The surface features of an area of land; topography.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A part of the earth's surface limited in extent; a region, district, or tract of land, either looked at in a general way or considered with reference to its fitness or use for some special purpose, as for a building-place or a battle-field: a term little used in English except in translating from the French, and then with the same meaning which it has in the original.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun geology A single, distinctive rock formation; an area having a preponderance of a particular rock or group of rocks.
  • noun An area of land or the particular features of it.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a piece of ground having specific characteristics or military potential

Etymologies

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

[French, from Old French, from Vulgar Latin *terrānum, alteration of Latin terrēnum, from neuter of terrēnus, of the earth; see terrene.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Borrowing from French terrain, from Latin terrenum ("land, ground"), neuter of terrenus ("consisting of earth"), from terra ("earth").

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Examples

Comments

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  • From the book The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. pg.139

    "I can't stop trying to imagine exactly what terrain i'll be thrown into."

    November 29, 2010