Word.ws English Dictionary

brownfield

brownfield noun: a site, to be used for housing or commerce, that has been previously used for industry and may be contaminated or need extensive clearing.

Noun

brownfield (plural brownfields)

  1. (attributive, often) A site, to be used for housing or commerce, that has been previously used for industry and may be contaminated or need extensive clearing.
    • My budget will improve our environment by accelerating the cleanup of toxic brownfields.2001, George W. Bush, State of the Union Address
    • On such a densely-populated island, most infrastructure projects are on brownfield sites, rather than starting in pastures new.2011 December 2, “Crossrail: The other side of the track”, in The Economist, archived from the original on 22 Oct 2020

Adjective

brownfield (not comparable)

  1. Being a development that has to integrate with legacy systems.
    • a brownfield project
    • Brownfield development is probably the most common situation for developers to be in, and in order for business to continue, an existing application infrastructure is necessary.2014, Ola Ellnestam, Daniel Brolund, The Mikado method, Shelter Island, NY: Manning, →ISBN

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Brownfield

Brownfield (plural Brownfields)

  1. A surname.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Brownfield

Brownfield

  1. A hamlet in the County of Paintearth, No. 18, Alberta, Canada.
  2. A town in Oxford County, Maine, United States.
  3. An unincorporated community in Laclede County, Missouri, United States.
  4. A city, the county seat of Terry County, Texas, United States.

Forms of brownfield

Noun
pluralbrownfields
Proper noun
pluralBrownfields

Plural of brownfield: brownfields

Origin of brownfield

From brown + field.

Questions about brownfield

What does brownfield mean?
Brownfield means a site, to be used for housing or commerce, that has been previously used for industry and may be contaminated or need extensive clearing.
What part of speech is brownfield?
Brownfield can be a noun, an adjective or a proper noun.
What is the plural of brownfield?
The plural of brownfield is brownfields.

Words near brownfield in the dictionary

  1. Browney
  2. browneye
  3. browneyed
  4. browneyes
  5. brownface
  6. brownfield
  7. brownfields
  8. brownhead
  9. brownheads
  10. Brownhill
  11. Brownhills

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: brownfield (page history and authors); Brownfield (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-brownfield.wav.

Cite this entry: “brownfield.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/brownfield. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.