Definitions

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

  • noun A flat grassland of tropical or subtropical regions.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A plain or extensive flat area covered with a sheet of snow or ice: so first used, with the accent on the first syllable, by Spanish writers.
  • noun A treeless plain: so first used in reference to American topography by Oviedo (1535), with the accent on the second syllable.
  • noun In phytogeography See grass-land.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A tract of level land covered with the vegetable growth usually found in a damp soil and warm climate, -- as grass or reeds, -- but destitute of trees.
  • noun (Bot.) a West Indian name for several climbing apocyneous plants of the genus Echites.
  • noun (Zoöl.) an American sparrow (Ammodramus sandwichensis or Passerculus savanna) of which several varieties are found on grassy plains from Alaska to the Eastern United States.
  • noun (Bot.) a name of two West Indian trees of the genus Citharexylum.

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

  • noun A tropical grassland with scattered trees

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

  • noun a flat grassland in tropical or subtropical regions

Etymologies

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

[Obsolete Spanish çavana, from Taíno zabana.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Spanish sabana, from Taino.

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