Terrain

//təˈɹeɪn// noun

noun ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A single, distinctive rock formation; an area having a preponderance of a particular rock or group of rocks. countable, uncountable
  2. 2
    a piece of ground having specific characteristics or military potential wordnet
  3. 3
    An area of land or its particular features. countable, uncountable

    "The race will be run over a variety of terrain, including grass and sand."

  4. 4
    The surface of the earth; the ground. countable, uncountable

    "This approach requires the aircraft to stay at an altitude of at least 3000 feet MSL until crossing the VOR in order to maintain terrain clearance."

  5. 5
    An individual's overall state of health. countable, uncountable

Synonyms

All synonyms
groundacresagoraair spaceairspacealluvion

Example

More examples

"Boeing's safety experts have joined others in the industry to form an international task force to try to eliminate one particular kind of air crash known as controlled flight into terrain, CFIT."

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from French terrain, from Latin terrenum (“land, ground”), neuter of terrenus (“consisting of earth”), from terra (“earth”).

Related phrases

all-terrainall-terrain vehiclecontrolled flight into terrainheight above average terrainhuman terrainlinguistic terrainterrain awareness and warning systemterrain parkterrain theory

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