Word for 'prairie'

[Alan Hartley]

Michael Mccafferty wrote:

> Bob's comments about prairie and plains makes me think of something I saw
> recently in a French trader's itinerary, where he calls the the wet
> prairie of the Kankakee a "plaine" (actually spelled "plenne") and then in
> parentheses, to explain what he means, he says "pays bas," which means
> "lowland". From this account it appears that in the West, Frenchmen were
> using "plains" to mean something slightly different from what is typically
> taken as the meaning of the word.

The OED says, PLAIN n1.:

1. a. A tract of country of which the general surface is comparatively
flat; an extent of level ground or flat meadow land; applied spec. (in
proper or quasi-proper names) to certain extensive tracts of this
character; e.g. Salisbury Plain, the Great Plain of England, etc. In pl.
spec. the river valleys of N. India." (first 1297)
    b. Chiefly pl. In Colonial and U.S. use applied to level treeless
tracts of country; prairie. (first 1779)