Other forms: landscapes, landscaping, landscaped
The landscape is everything you see when you look out over a stretch of country — hills, fields, hedges, a road, the weather sitting on top of it all. Stand at the top of a hill and turn slowly: that whole view is the landscape.
It names pictures of that view too — a landscape hanging in a gallery, or the landscape shot a photographer waits an hour of light for. Landscape is also the wide way round for a page or a screen, the opposite of portrait, so you turn your phone sideways to get landscape. As a verb, to landscape a garden is to shape the ground, plant it and lay the paths. And it goes figurative everywhere: the political landscape, the media landscape, the landscape of the industry after the merger. Scenery is close, but scenery is the pretty version; a landscape can be flat, grey and industrial.
1nounlandscapeAll the visible features of an area of land, taken in together.
“From the top of the hill the whole landscape opened out below them.”
synonyms: scenery, terrain
2nounshotA painting or photograph of open country.
“He photographs landscapes in winter, when the light stays low all day.”
3nounpageA page or screen orientation that is wider than it is tall.
“Turn the page to landscape or the table will not fit.”
4noungeneralThe general state of a subject or activity at a given time.
“The legal landscape has changed since the ruling.”
5verbshapeTo shape and plant an area of ground.
“They landscaped the slope behind the house with three terraces.”
Also accepted in games: scenery
Old English had landsċipe — a region, a district, a tract of land. English later wrote it landskip and lantschip, and then Dutch landschap, meaning much the same thing, pulled the spelling into the shape we use now. Under all of it is an old root that meant nothing more than land.
Proto-Indo-European
*lendʰ- (land)
Dutch
landschap — region, district, province, landscape
Old English
landsċipe
Middle English
*landschippe
English, today
landscape
Built from
From an alteration (due to Dutch landschap) of earlier landskip, lantschip, from Middle English landschippe, landschapp, from Old English landsċipe, landsċeap (“region, district, tract of land”); in some senses from Dutch landschap (“region, district, province, landscape”), from landscap, lantscap (“region”), from landskepi, landskapi (“region”). Cognate with Scots landskape, landskep, landskip (“landscape”), West Frisian lânskip (“landscape”), Low German landschop (“landscape, district”), German Landschaft (“landscape, countryside, scenery”), Danish landskab (“landscape, countryside”), Swedish landskap (“landscape, scenery, province”), Icelandic landskapur (“countryside”). by surface analysis, en + land + ship*.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA