Word for 'prairie'?

[Alan Hartley]

> I think that's the original sense of prairie in English, too, e.g., as it
> is used in Lewis & Clark.  They refer repeatedly to seeing "a beautiful
> (or some other description of) prairie."  From French placenames like
> Prairie du Chien I think that prairie must be a French loanword in
> English.

You're right about the borrowing.

And from my forthcoming Lewis & Clark lexicon:

PRAIRIE  A treeless, grassy area, ranging in area from a few acres to
many square miles, from a meadow to the Great Plains. Prairie was
originally a French word for ‘meadow’.

a Small Preree on the Larbd. Side [12 Dec 03 WC 2.130]

the first 5 miles of our rout laid through a beautifull high level and
fertile prarie which incircles the town of St. Louis [20 May 04 ML 2.240]

Camped in a Prarie on the L. S.composed of good land and plenty of water
roleing & interspursed with points of timbered land, Those Praries are
not like those…E. of the Mississippi Void of every thing except grass,
they abound with Hasel Grapes & a wild plumb…I Saw great numbers of Deer
in the Praries [10 Jun 04 WC 2.292]

on the South Side is a beuautiful Bottom prarie which will contain about
2000 acres of Land covered with wild rye and wild potatoes. [10 Jul 04
JO 9.023]

crossed thro: the plains…with the view of finding Elk, we walked all day
through those praries without Seeing any [20 Jul 04  WC  2.397]
those Indians are now out in the praries…Hunting the buffalow [20 Jul 04
WC 2.399]

The Prairie are not as one would suppose from the name, meadows or
bottoms[,] but a sort of high plain…without timber…This Prairie ground
extends from the Wabash to the Mountains [Nicholas Biddle in Jackson
Letters (ed. 2) 2.507]