Other forms: meadows
A meadow is a field of wild grass and flowers, alive with insects in summer. A wildflower meadow, a water meadow, a meadow full of bees.
Strictly a meadow is grassland cut for hay rather than grazed, which is why the flowers get to set seed. Britain has lost about ninety-seven per cent of its wildflower meadows since the 1930s, which is why meadow restoration is now a conservation project rather than a farming practice. A water meadow is one deliberately flooded in winter. Note meadowsweet and meadow pipit, both named for where they live.
1nounmeadowA field of wild grass and flowers.
“The meadow is cut once a year in late July.”
meadow is a grassland.
Old English maedwe comes from the same root as mow — a meadow is a place that is mown. The name records the farming practice rather than the flowers, which is exactly backwards from how the word feels now.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂meh₁-
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂met- — to mow, reap
Proto-Germanic
*mēdwō
Old English
mǣdwe
Middle English
medowe
English, today
meadow
From Middle English medowe, medewe, medwe (also mede > Modern English mead), from Old English mǣdwe, inflected form of mǣd (see mead), from Proto-Germanic mēdwō, from Proto-Indo-European h₂met- (“to mow, reap”), enlargement of h₂meh₁-. Related to mead (“meadow”) and to math (“mowed result or area”). More at mow. 2 Cognate with yol mead (“meadow”), stq Mäid (“meadow”), West Frisian miede (“meadow”), Dutch made (“hayland, meadow”), German Matte (“meadow”); also kw mysi (“to harvest; to mow”), Welsh medi (“to reap”), Latin metō (“to harvest, reap; to cut; to mow”), Ancient Greek ἄμητος (“harvest”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA