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 undercut , 24. Comparedead furrow . - noun Uncultivated land subject to taxation.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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_High land Doctrine_, in contra-distinction to the _Low land_, or
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-- Holland means _hole_ or _hollow land_ -- land lower than the level of contiguous water, and protected by
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This land was called AGER PUBLICUS, or _public land_.
Ancient Rome : from the earliest times down to 476 A. D. Robert Franklin Pennell
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Some of this land was sold or given away as "homesteads," and then it became AGER PRIVÁTUS, or _private land_.
Ancient Rome : from the earliest times down to 476 A. D. Robert Franklin Pennell
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Yes, land, cried Ole Peters, land that one can cart away on thirteen wheelbarrows!
Paras. 200–299 1917
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High wages, high taxes, and high-priced land, necessitate high farming; and by high farming, I mean growing large crops every year, and on every portion of the farm; but high wages and _low-priced land_ do not necessarily demand high farming.
Talks on Manures A Series of Familiar and Practical Talks Between the Author and the Deacon, the Doctor, and other Neighbors, on the Whole Subject Joseph Harris 1860
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In a short time the atmosphere over the land becomes cooler than that over the sea; it descends and flows off out to sea; thus forming the _land breeze_.
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The very thought of being _aground_ comforted some, for, to their minds, it implied nearness to land, and _land_ was, in their idea, safety.
The Coxswain's Bride also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue 1859
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States to keep troops in time of peace, and they are expressly distinguished and placed in a separate category from land or naval forces in the sixteenth paragraph above quoted; and the words _land_ and _naval forces_ are shown by paragraphs 12, 13, and 14, to mean the Army and Navy of the Confederate States.
The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government Jefferson Davis 1848
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Cape Clarence stood out bold and clear, with a midnight sun behind it: and the light streamed through the different ice-choked channels between Capes Hardwicke and Clarence, throwing up the land, _where there was land_, in strong and dark relief.
Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; or, Eighteen Months in the Polar Regions, in Search of Sir John Franklin's Expedition, in the Years 1850-51 Sherard Osborn 1848
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Land sparing involves lumping habitat patches together into larger blocks, alongside the adoption of lower-impact ways to boost yields in the areas that are still farmed.
Current conservation policies risk accelerating biodiversity loss Ian Bateman 2023
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Think of forest bathing — slow, mindful walks in the woods — and remove the forest and you have something like land snorkeling.
Land Snorkeling? Townsizing? A User’s Guide to the Latest Travel Lingo. Elaine GlusacElaine Glusac is the Frugal Traveler columnist, focusing on budget-friendly tips and journeys. 2025
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