Other forms: prairies
The prairie is the vast grassy plains of North America. Across the prairie, prairie grass, the prairie wind.
Almost all of it has been ploughed — tallgrass prairie is among the most reduced ecosystems on earth, with a small fraction of its original extent left. The deep root systems built the soil that made the region farmland. The word is French for a meadow.
1nounprairieThe vast grassy plains of North America.
“Herds of buffalo once roamed freely across the prairie.”
prairie is a grassland.
Also accepted in games: grassland
French prairie means a meadow, from Latin pratum, a meadow. French explorers named the plains.
Latin
prātum — meadow
Vulgar Latin
*prataria
Old French
praerie
French
prairie
English, today
prairie
French prairie, from Old French praerie, from Vulgar Latin prataria, from Latin prātum (“meadow”) + -aria.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA