Word.ws English Dictionary

downland

/ˈdaʊn.lænd/US/ˈdaʊnˌlænd/

downland noun: an area of rolling hills (downs), often grassy pasture over chalk or limestone.

downland: an area of rolling hills (downs), often grassy pasture over chalk or limestone
Image: Andrew Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

downland (plural downlands)

  1. (UK) An area of rolling hills (downs), often grassy pasture over chalk or limestone.
    • Hail! every distant hill, and downland plain!
      Your dew-hid beauties Fancy oft unveils;1789, Ann Ward Radcliffe, chapter 4, in The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne, London: T. Hookham, page 93
    • […] I walked on to Canterbury early in the morning. It was now winter again; and the fresh, cold windy day, and the sweeping downland, brightened up my hopes a little.1849 May – 1850 November, Charles Dickens, The Personal History of David Copperfield, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1850, →OCLC

Examples of downland in a sentence

  • Shortly after leaving Godshill, a lengthy climb begins through rolling downland country at 1 in 75, easing to 1 in 103.1946 July and August, K. Westcott Jones, “Isle of Wight Central Railway—2”, in Railway Magazine, page 244:
  • The large cement works nearby are served by sidings, and strike a sudden jarring industrial note in the midst of the rural downland scene.1953 February, H. A. Vallance, “To Brighton through the Shoreham Gap”, in Railway Magazine, page 82:
  • I was surprised to see that the plane had been wrecked, not on one of the hefty cliff faces of our mountain, but on a gentle green hillside, merging into downland.1958, Muriel Spark, chapter 6, in Robinson, New York: New Directions, published 2003, page 66:
  • He drank another whisky then left the pub and climbed slowly up the downlands, bent as the trees and shrubs were bent.2010, Howard Jacobson, chapter 12, in The Finkler Question, New York: Bloomsbury, page 278:

Forms of downland

pluraldownlands

Origin of downland

From Old English dūnland, equivalent to down + land.

Questions about downland

What does downland mean?
Downland means an area of rolling hills (downs), often grassy pasture over chalk or limestone.
How do you use downland in a sentence?
Shortly after leaving Godshill, a lengthy climb begins through rolling downland country at 1 in 75, easing to 1 in 103.
What part of speech is downland?
Downland is a noun.
How do you pronounce downland?
Downland is pronounced /ˈdaʊn.lænd/ (UK).
What is the plural of downland?
The plural of downland is downlands.

Words near downland in the dictionary

  1. downing tools
  2. downings
  3. Downingtown
  4. downish
  5. downladder
  6. downland
  7. downlands
  8. downlead
  9. downleads
  10. downleg
  11. downlegs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: downland (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.

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

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