Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Land characterized by downs.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun An area of rolling
downs , often grassypasture overchalk orlimestone
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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And if you have to wait a while, enjoy the views across rolling National Trust downland to Lyme Bay on the Jurassic Coast.
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The adonis blue and 20 other butterfly species, including Britain's tiniest butterfly, the small blue, have flown on to "the butterfly haven", a flowery piece of artificial chalk downland, which was the brainchild of the school's environmental science teacher Dan Danahar.
Butterfly revival could be threatened by cuts, warns charity 2011
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In the exposed plantation known as Sentry Hill Wood, beech leaves are brown and the patch of Lloyd George's ground left as downland when a tax was imposed on reclamation is covered in rank bracken and bedraggled rosebay willowherb interspersed with gorse, rowan, willow and oak.
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I downland anything I see interesting or reviewed from anywhere.
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To immerse oneself in The Enigma of Arrival, say, is to experience the deep, slow calm that comes over its narrator as he paces the ancient chalky downland of Salisbury Plain, takes the measure of the seasons and the wildlife, familiarizes himself with the habits of the local rustics, and makes leisured comparisons between the agricultural rhythms of England and those of his Caribbean homeland.
Cruel and Unusual 2008
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Soon they heard the gurgle of water, and several times they glimpsed streams that cut downland toward Coldwater Creek.
Rot & Ruin Jonathan Maberry 2010
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A piebald horse looms from the drizzle beside its new timber-built stable, and higher, on former downland with treeless hedges, the barley is yellowing.
Country diary 2010
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They had gone to Redhill for a weekend, and during the outing, on open downland, below the skyline and where nobody could possibly have a directional mike on them, the former controller with his former agent had worked out a series of drops, meeting places and telephone codes.
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Clouds gathered even before they reached the open downland of Salisbury Plain.
Venom Joan Brady 2010
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To immerse oneself in The Enigma of Arrival, say, is to experience the deep, slow calm that comes over its narrator as he paces the ancient chalky downland of Salisbury Plain, takes the measure of the seasons and the wildlife, familiarizes himself with the habits of the local rustics, and makes leisured comparisons between the agricultural rhythms of England and those of his Caribbean homeland.
Cruel and Unusual 2008
bilby commented on the word downland
"As a child I watched chalk downlands, where rare orchids and wild strawberries, adonis blues and marbled whites, whitethroats and hobbies, flint pits and burial mounds had survived since the Neolithic, being wiped clean by ploughs, to produce grain that fed nothing but the subsidy mountains."
- George Monbiot, The Naming of Things, monbiot.com, 15 March 2010.
March 16, 2010