Etimology
From Middle English lond, land, from Old English land, from Proto-West Germanic *land, from Proto-Germanic *landą (“land”), from Proto-Indo-European *lendʰ- (“land, heath”). Cognate with Scots laund (“land”), West Frisian lân (“land”), Dutch land (“land, country”), German Land (“land, country, state”), Norwegian and Swedish land (“land, country, shore, territory”), Icelandic land (“land”). Non-Germanic cognates include Old Irish lann (“heath”), Welsh llan (“enclosure”), Breton lann (“heath”), Old Church Slavonic лѧдо (lędo), from Proto-Slavic *lęda (“heath, wasteland”) and Albanian lëndinë (“heath, grassland”).
noun
land (countable and uncountable, plural lands)
The part of Earth which is not covered by oceans or other bodies of water.
Real estate or landed property; a partitioned and measurable area which is owned and acquired and on which buildings and structures can be built and erected.
A country or region.
A person's country of origin and/or homeplace; homeland.
The soil, in respect to its nature or quality for farming.
(often in combination) realm, domain.
(agriculture) The ground left unploughed between furrows; any of several portions into which a field is divided for ploughing.
(Ireland, colloquial) A shock or fright.
(electronics) A conducting area on a board or chip which can be used for connecting wires.
On a compact disc or similar recording medium, an area of the medium which does not have pits.
(travel) The non-airline portion of an itinerary. Hotel, tours, cruises, etc.
(obsolete) The ground or floor.
(nautical) The lap of the strakes in a clinker-built boat; the lap of plates in an iron vessel; called also landing.
In any surface prepared with indentations, perforations, or grooves, that part of the surface which is not so treated, such as the level part of a millstone between the furrows.
(Scotland, historical) A group of dwellings or tenements under one roof and having a common entry.
Examples
Most insects live on land.
There are 50 acres of land in this estate.
They come from a faraway land.
wet land good or bad land for growing potatoes
I'm going to Disneyland.
Maybe that's how it works in TV-land, but not in the real world.
Synonym: furlong
He got an awful land when the police arrived.
Now, assume that the recording is being done with 100 grooves per inch, and that the record groove is .006 inch wide. This means that the land on either side on any given groove in the absence of sound waves is .004 inch.
Our city offices sell a lot more land than our suburban offices.
her selfe vppon the land / She did prostrate
The FBI maintains a database, the General Rifling Characteristics file, which is organized by caliber, number of lands and grooves, direction of twist, and width of lands and grooves, to help an examiner figure out the origin of a recovered bullet.
The human eye is a precision instrument. It can detect grooves and lands on a slug more efficiently than any computer.
Related words
hyponyms
bookland
borderland
brushland
bushland
cloud cuckoo-land
Crown land
Disneyland
downland
dreamland
dry land
fantasy land (fantasyland)
farmland
Fiordland
flatland
grassland
highland
homeland
Hurdland
inland
Lalaland
Levelland
lowland
mainland
midland
moorland
Newfoundland
no man's land
Northland, northland
outland
overland
pastureland
pineland
playland
plowland, ploughland
Queensland
revenue land
Southland, southland
tableland
TV land
upland
Westland
wildland
wonderland
woodland
verb
land (third-person singular simple present lands, present participle landing, simple past and past participle landed)
(intransitive) To descend to a surface, especially from the air.
(dated) To alight, to descend from a vehicle.
(intransitive) To come into rest.
(intransitive) To arrive on land, especially a shore or dock, from a body of water.
(transitive) To bring to land.
(transitive, informal) To capture or arrest.
(transitive) To acquire; to secure.
(slang, transitive) To succeed in having sexual relations with; to score
(transitive) (of a blow) To deliver.
(intransitive) (of a punch) To connect
(intransitive) To go down well with an audience.
Examples
The plane is about to land.
10. You will be civil and attentive to passengers, giving proper assistance to ladies and children getting in or out, and never start the car before passengers are fairly received or landed.
It can be tricky to land a helicopter.
Use the net to land the fish.
I'll undertake to land them on our coast.
`He told me that he was certain that Coates shot at him. We threw out a drag and landed Coates within an hour.'
As Di Matteo celebrated and captain John Terry raised the trophy for the fourth time, the Italian increased his claims to become the permanent successor to Andre Villas-Boas by landing a trophy.
Too ugly to ever land a chick
If you land a knockout blow, you’ll win the match
If the punches land, you might lose a few teeth!
Some of the comedian's jokes failed to land.
We told an Amelia Earhart joke yesterday- did not go great with the audience. Someone wrote: "You can't be surprised when an Amelia Earhart joke doesn't land."
Etimology
From Middle English *land, from Old English hland. More at lant.
noun
land (uncountable)
lant; urine