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prairie

[prair-ee]

noun

an extensive, level or slightly undulating, mostly treeless tract of land in the Mississippi valley, characterized by a highly fertile soil and originally covered with coarse grasses, and merging into drier plateaus in the west. Compare pampas, savanna, steppe.

a tract of grassland; meadow.

(in Florida) a low, sandy tract of grassland often covered with water.

Southern U.S. wet grassland; marsh.

(initial capital letter

) a steam locomotive having a two-wheeled front truck, six driving wheels, and a two-wheeled rear truck.

Origin:
1675–85; < French: meadow < Vulgar Latin *prātāria, equivalent to Latin prāt(um) meadow + -āria, feminine of -ārius -ary

Related forms

prai·rie·like, adjective

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Prairie is always a great word to know.

So is quincunx. Does it mean:

an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.

a chattering or flighty, light-headed person.

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Example Sentences

In recent years, the prairie chicken population has thinned even more as their habitat has disappeared.

It's impossible to run out into the academic prairie all by yourself.

Many of the remaining homes sit in swathes of prairie created by untended empty lots.

EXPAND

In recent years, the prairie chicken population has thinned even more as their habitat has disappeared.

It's impossible to run out into the academic prairie all by yourself.

Many of the remaining homes sit in swathes of prairie created by untended empty lots.

In this lesson, students learn about the conflicts relating to humans and wildlife in prairie habitats.

State governors fail to back a federal program to preserve and protect native prairie.

The landscape is slowly becoming more open and green, the prairie reappearing from beneath the plant.

Wild prairie dogs may soon get a dose of something extra in their daily diet: an oral vaccine against the plague.

Chicago's mayor has put a green roof on city hall-a miniature expanse of prairie that soaks up water and absorbs heat.

In this lesson, students will learn about the characteristics of prairie habitats.

Stimulating a plankton bloom is the equivalent of fertilizing a prairie.

Researchers work to decode a complex language of chirps and squeaks that prairie dogs use to warn each other of predators.

Thus the two men set off on an unlikely paperchase across the prairie.

Print detailed illustrations of prairie dogs and other animals to color or use in school projects.

Prairie voles in monogamous relationships respond less to drugs.

They came over the prairie in their pickup trucks, in the cool, quiet hours before dawn.

Slim, sparsely haired tail with black tip unique among prairie dogs.

Their study was conducted in the prairie vole, a small rodent that mates for life.

Not to mention people seeking concert and movie tickets for campus cultural events, prairie lovers and physics groupies.

Coyotes are smaller than wolves and are sometimes called prairie wolves or brush wolves.

Not only that, but once a ferret kills a prairie dog, it usurps the burrow.

Also here: a period homestead and a prairie restoration.

It depends mainly on the abandoned burrows of prairie dogs for nesting sites and shelter.

But the prairie chicken is experiencing a catastrophic decline here in the.

Abundant local parks, nearby prairie preserves and woodlands.

It's a sprawling marsh and bog-prime bird habitat-with a spruce-tamarack forest and some prairie areas.

Like a prairie with no more vacant land to homestead or a hip area code with no more cellphone numbers, the pool of.

Most suspected cases had direct contact with prairie dogs or at work in veterinarian offices and pet shops.

When danger lurks, the prairie dog males fend for themselves, but the females look out for the community.

Which is a good thing because the emotions sweeping the citizens of this prairie city have grown to a fever pitch.

The sleek masked predators dine almost exclusively on prairie dogs.

Ferrets co-habitate with their prey in extensive underground warrens known as prairie dog towns.

Lewis's descriptions of the prairie dogs were the first scientific accounts of them ever made.

But the practice of draining glacier-formed prairie potholes to increase cropland destroys critical habitat for migrating birds.

In some cases, such as prairie remnants and old-growth forest.

Closed-toe shoes or boots are a must to avoid injuries from cactus spines, prairie rattlesnakes, and falls.

COLLAPSE

Dictionary.com Unabridged

noun

a historical novel (1827) by James Fenimore Cooper.

Compare Leather-Stocking Tales.

Link To prairie

Collins

World English Dictionary

prairie (ˈprɛərɪ)

—n
	(often plural) pampas steppe Compare savanna a treeless grassy plain of the central US and S Canada

[C18: from French, from Old French praierie, from Latin prātum meadow]

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

prairie

tract of level or undulating grassland in N.Amer., 1773, from Fr. prairie, from O.Fr. praerie (12c.), from V.L. *prataria, from L. pratum "meadow," originally "a hollow." The word existed in M.E. as prayere, but was lost and reborrowed to describe the American plains. Prairie dog is attested from 1774;

EXPAND

prairie schooner "immigrant's wagon" is from 1841.

COLLAPSE

American Heritage

Science Dictionary

prairie

(prâr'ē) Pronunciation Key
An extensive area of flat or rolling grassland, especially the large plain of central North America.