Mesa

name, noun

name, noun ·2 syllables ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Flat area of land or plateau higher than other land, with one or more clifflike edges.

    "A few more miles of hot sand and gravel and red stone brought us around a low mesa to the Little Colorado River."

  2. 2
    flat tableland with steep edges wordnet
  3. 3
    a structure with components rising above the insulating substrate that surrounds it

    "The ohmic contacts were deposited at the edge of the mesa."

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A city in Maricopa County, Arizona.
  2. 2
    Acronym of Mining Enforcement and Safety Administration. US, abbreviation, acronym, alt-of
  3. 3
    A census-designated place in Inyo County, California.
  4. 4
    An unincorporated community in Colorado.
  5. 5
    A city in Washington.
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  1. 6
    A town in Mozambique.

Synonyms

All synonyms
alkali flatalluvial plainbasinbenchbottomlandbushveld

Example

More examples

"A small, homogeneous population with a precious culture—a Hopi village on a mesa top in America, e.g.—may be unable to tolerate any outsider for long."

Etymology

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

Related phrases

Antelope MesaBig Mountain MesaBlack MesaFirst MesaMesa CountySecond MesaThird Mesa

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.