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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)

  1. (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.
  2. (obsolete) A battlefield.

Translations

Adjective

champaign (comparative more champaign, superlative most champaign)

  1. 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.

Related terms