terrain

Unadapted borrowing from French terrain, from Latin terrenum (“land, ground”), neuter of terrenus (“consisting of earth”), from terra (“earth”).

• IPA^(key): /təˈɹeɪn/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪn

terrain (countable and uncountable, plural terrains)

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

   The race will be run over a variety of terrain, including grass and sand.

3. (chiefly aviation) The surface of the earth; the ground.

   This approach requires the aircraft to stay at an altitude of at least 3000 feet MSL until crossing the VOR in order to maintain terrain clearance.

   controlled flight into terrain

   TOO LOW, TERRAIN

• (area of land): ground

• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “terrain”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.

• rantier, retrain, trainer

Inherited from Old French terrain, terrein, from Vulgar Latin *terranum, from Latin terrēnum.

• IPA^(key): /tɛ.ʁɛ̃/

• Audio (CA):

  (file)

• Audio:

  (file)

terrain m (plural terrains)

1. ground, landscape
2. field (as in soccer field)

   Un nouveau terrain de football a été aménagé l'an dernier. ― A new soccer field was built last year.

3. lot, plot, parcel

• → Czech: terén
• Norwegian:

  → Norwegian Bokmål: terreng

  → Norwegian Nynorsk: terreng

• → Swedish: terräng

• “terrain”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• rentrai, ternira, trainer, traîner

• terren (Rumantsch Grischun, Sursilvan)
• taragn (Sutsilvan)
• teragn (Surmiran)

From Vulgar Latin *terranum, from Latin terrenum.

terrain m (plural terrains)

1. (Puter, Vallader) land, soil
2. (Puter) country, land

   Synonym: (Rumantsch Grischun, Puter, Vallader) pajais