Other forms: terraces
A terrace is a flat outdoor level built for people or plants — the paved space outside a house or café where the tables go. Coffee on the terrace, a heater in the corner, the street a metre below.
In Britain a terrace is also a row of houses joined wall to wall in one long block, which is where 'terraced house' comes from, and whole streets are named Terrace for that reason. Cut into a hillside, terraces are the flat steps farmers make so the soil and the water stay put: rice terraces, vine terraces. At an old football ground, the terraces were the concrete steps where fans stood shoulder to shoulder. There is a verb too — you terrace a slope before you plant it. Keep a terrace apart from a balcony, which hangs off an upper floor; a terrace rests on the ground or on something solid.
1nounpavedA flat paved area beside a building, used for sitting outdoors.
“We ate on the terrace until the wind got up.”
2nounterraceA row of houses joined together in one continuous block.
“They live in a red-brick terrace near the station.”
3nounseriesOne of a series of flat steps cut into a slope for growing crops.
“The hillside is cut into terraces of young rice.”
4nounsteppedThe stepped standing area at a sports ground.
“The old terraces held twenty thousand people on their feet.”
terrace is a flat outdoor level.
A terrace is earth, raised and flattened. English borrowed it from French terrasse, which came through Old Occitan terrassa and a Vulgar Latin terrāceus from Latin terra, 'land'. The word has never stopped meaning a piece of ground you have done something to.
Proto-Indo-European
*ters-
Vulgar Latin
*terrāceus
Old Occitan
terrassa
French
terrasse
English, today
terrace
Built from
Borrowed from French terrasse, from Old Occitan terrassa, from Vulgar Latin terrāceus, from terra (“land”). a doublet of terrasse.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA