Definify.com
Webster 1913 Edition
Champaign
Cham-paign′
,Noun.
[OF.
champaigne
; same word as campagne
.] A flat, open country.
Fair
champaign
, with less rivers interveined. Milton.
Through Apline vale or
champaign
wide. Wordsworth.
Cham-paign′
,Adj.
Flat; open; level.
A wide,
champaign
country, filled with herds. Addison.
Definition 2024
champaign
champaign
English
Alternative forms
- champeyne [15th c.]
- champaine [15th-17th c.]
- champain
Noun
champaign (plural champaigns)
- (geography, archaic) Open countryside, or an area of open countryside.
- 1485, Sir Thomas Malory, chapter vj, in Le Morte Darthur, book V:
- And therwith torned theyr horses and rode ouer waters and thurgh woodes tyl they came to theyre busshement / where as syr Lyonel and syr Bedeuer were houyng / The romayns folowed fast after on horsbak and on foote ouer a chāpayn vnto a wood
- 1605, William Shakespeare, King Lear, I.i:
- Of all these bounds even from this line to this, / With shadowy forests and with champaigns riched, / With plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads, / We make thee lady.
- 1621, Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, II.ii.3:
- So Segrave in Leicestershire […] is sited in a champaign at the edge of the wolds, and more barren than the villages about it, yet no place likely yields a better air.
- 1485, Sir Thomas Malory, chapter vj, in Le Morte Darthur, book V:
- (obsolete) A battlefield.
Translations
open countryside
Adjective
champaign (comparative more champaign, superlative most champaign)
- Pertaining to open countryside; unforested, flat.
- 1603, John Florio, translating Michel de Montaigne, Essayes, London: Edward Blount, OCLC 946730821, Folio Society, 2006, vol.1, p.206:
- They are seated alongst the sea-coast, encompassed toward the land with huge and steepie mountains, having betweene both, a hundred leagues or thereabouts of open and champaine ground.
- 1603, John Florio, translating Michel de Montaigne, Essayes, London: Edward Blount, OCLC 946730821, Folio Society, 2006, vol.1, p.206: