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mesa

UK/ˈmeɪ.sə/US/ˈmeɪ.sə/
nounC1Common in everyday speech and writing · #7,434 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: mesas

A mesa is a flat-topped hill with steep sides. A high mesa, the mesa country, camp on the mesa.

The flat top is a hard layer of rock that has protected the softer rock beneath from washing away. It is a word of the American south-west, and a small one is a butte.

J Brew · CC BY-SA 2.0

Definitions of mesa

  1. 1nounmesaA flat-topped hill with steep sides.C1

    “The road climbed for an hour and came out on a mesa.”

mesa is a hill.

Where it comes from

Spanish mesa means a table, from Latin mensa; the shape gave the landform its name.

  1. Latin

    mēnsa

  2. Spanish

    mesa — table

  3. English, today

    mesa

First attested 1759, from Spanish mesa (“table”), from Latin mēnsa. a doublet of mensa.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

mesa in the wild

  • The county was named for the many large mesas in the area, including the Grand Mesa, the largest flat-topped mountain in the world.

    Mesa County, Colorado

  • Later, Archaic people established semi-permanent rock shelters in and around the mesa.

    Mesa Verde National Park

  • The Grand Mesa is a large mesa in western Colorado in the United States.

    Grand Mesa

  • The mesa rises about 6,000 feet above the surrounding river valleys, including the Grand Valley to the west.

    Grand Mesa

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.