Definition
nounA land area free of woodland, cities, and towns; an area of open country.
nounA land area free of woodland, cities, and towns; an area of open country., The open country near or belonging to a town or city.
Sentence Examples
What's your major field?
Cattle were grazing in the field.
We had to walk across a ploughed field.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English feeld, feld (“field”), from Old English feld (“field”), from Proto-West Germanic *felþu (“field”), from Proto-Germanic *felþuz (“field”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *pleh₂- (“field, plain”) or *pleth₂- (“flat”) (with schwebeablaut).
Cognates
Cognate with Scots feld, feild (“field”), North Frisian fial, fälj (“field”), Saterland Frisian Fäild (“field”), West Frisian fjild (“field”), Dutch veld (“field”), German and Luxembourgish Feld (“field”), Vilamovian fald (“field”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk felt (“field”), Swedish fält (“field”), Finnish pelto (“field”), Asturian and Leonese platu (“plate”), Aragonese and Spanish plato (“plate”), Catalan plat (“plate”), French plat (“dish”), Galician, Mirandese, and Portuguese prato (“plate”), Italian piatto (“plate”), Latin *plattus (“flattened”), Greek πλατύς (platýs, “wide, broad”). Doublet of plate. Related also to Middle English flat (“flat”), Old English folde (“earth, land, territory”), Old English folm (“palm of the hand”). More at flat, fold.
Not related to English felt.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Harry shook his head, and wandered away miserable through the fields, and would not in these days even set his foot upon the soil of the park. “He was not going to intrude any farther,” he said to the rector. “You can come to church, at any rate,” his father said, “for he certainly will not be there while you are at the parsonage.” Oh yes, Harry would go to the church. “I have yet to understand that Mr. Prosper is owner of the church, and the path there from the rectory is, at any rate, open to the public;” for at Buston the church stands on one corner of the park."
— 1883, Anthony Trollope, Mr. Scarborough's Family, Chap. XXIV:
"I corralled the judge, and we started off across the fields, in no very mild state of fear of that gentleman's wife, whose vigilance was seldom relaxed. And thus we came by a circuitous route to Mohair, the judge occupied by his own guilty thoughts, and I by others not less disturbing."
— 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter VIII, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:
"The castled crag of Drachenfels
Frowns o’er the wide and winding Rhine
Whose breast of waters broadly swells
Between the banks which bear the vine
And hills all rich with blossomed trees
And fields which promise corn and wine
And scatter’d cities crowning these
Whose far white walls along them shine,
Have strew’d a scene, which I should see
With double joy wert thou with mo."
— 1816, Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto the Third, LV:
"Anstruther laughed good-naturedly. “[…] I shall take out half a dozen intelligent maistries from our Press and get them to give our villagers instruction when they begin work and when they are in the fields.”"
— 1927, F. E. Penny, chapter 5, in Pulling the Strings:
"Tarry, sweet soul, for mine; then fly abreast,
As in this glorious and well-foughten field
We kept together in our chivalry!"
— c. 1599, William Shakespeare, King Henry V, act IV, scene VI: