Word.ws English Dictionary

land

/lænd/UK[lænd]

land noun: the part of Earth which is not covered by oceans or other bodies of water.

Noun (1)

land (countable and uncountable, plural lands)

  1. The part of Earth which is not covered by oceans or other bodies of water.
    • Most insects live on land.
  2. Real estate or landed property; a partitioned and measurable area which is owned and acquired and on which buildings and structures can be built and erected.
    • There are 50 acres of land in this estate.
  3. A country or region.
    • They come from a faraway land.
  4. A person's country of origin and/or homeplace; homeland.
  5. The soil, in respect to its nature or quality for farming.
    • wet land
    • good or bad land for growing potatoes
  6. (in-compounds, often) Realm, domain.
    • I'm going to Disneyland.
    • Maybe that's how it works in TV-land, but not in the real world.
  7. The ground left unploughed between furrows.
    Synonyms:
    furlong
  8. Any of several portions into which a field is divided for ploughing.
    Synonyms:
    furlong
  9. (Ireland, colloquial) A shock or fright.
    • He got an awful land when the police arrived.
  10. A conducting area on a board or chip which can be used for connecting wires.
  11. On a compact disc or similar recording medium, an area of the medium which does not have pits.
    • Now, assume that the recording is being done with 100 grooves per inch, and that the record groove is .006 inch wide. This means that the land on either side on any given groove in the absence of sound waves is .004 inch.1935, H. Courtney Bryson, The Gramophone Record, page 72
  12. The non-airline portion of an itinerary. Hotel, tours, cruises, etc.
    • Our city offices sell a lot more land than our suburban offices.
Show 4 more meaningsShow fewer meanings
  1. (obsolete) The ground or floor.
    • her selfe vppon the land / She did prostrate1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 7
  2. The lap of the strakes in a clinker-built boat; the lap of plates in an iron vessel; called also landing.
  3. In any surface prepared with indentations, perforations, or grooves, that part of the surface which is not so treated, such as the level part of a millstone between the furrows.
    1. The space between the rifling grooves in a gun.
      • The FBI maintains a database, the General Rifling Characteristics (GRC) file, which is organized by caliber, number of lands and grooves, direction of twist, and width of lands and grooves, to help an examiner figure out the origin of a recovered bullet.2008 August 1, Lisa Steele, “Ballistics”, in Eric York Drogin, editor, Science for Lawyers, American Bar Association, page 16
      • The human eye is a precision instrument. It can detect grooves and lands on a slug more efficiently than any computer.2012 November 15, “One Way to Get Off”, in Elementary, season 1, episode 7, spoken by Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller)
  4. (Scotland, historical) A group of dwellings or tenements under one roof and having a common entry.

Verb

land (third-person singular simple present lands, present participle landing, simple past and past participle landed)

  1. (intransitive) To descend to a surface, especially from the air.
    • The plane is about to land.
    Synonyms:
    alight
  2. (dated) To alight, to descend from a vehicle.
    • 10. You will be civil and attentive to passengers, giving proper assistance to ladies and children getting in or out, and never start the car before passengers are fairly received or landed.1859, “Rules adopted by the Sixth Avenue Railway, N. Y.”, quoted in Alexander Easton, A Practical Treatise on Street or Horse-Power Railways, page 108
  3. (intransitive) To come into rest.
  4. (intransitive) To arrive on land, especially a shore or dock, from a body of water.
    • Tatan and Erhtan are two small islands in the sea southwest of Kinmen.[…]A contingent of some 30 Communist troops tried to land at Erhtan, but were disarmed by Government defenders.1981, A Pictorial History of the Republic of China: Its Founding and Development, volume II, Taipei: Modern China Press, →OCLC, page 303, column 1
  5. (transitive) To bring to land.
    • It can be tricky to land a helicopter.
    • Use the net to land the fish.
  6. (informal, transitive) To capture or arrest.
    • `He told me that he was certain that Coates shot at him. We threw out a drag and landed Coates within an hour.'1920 June, The Electrical Experimenter, New York, page 151, column 3
  7. (transitive) To acquire; to secure.
    • She landed a job at the company.
    • As Di Matteo celebrated and captain John Terry raised the trophy for the fourth time, the Italian increased his claims to become the permanent successor to Andre Villas-Boas by landing a trophy.2012 May 5, Phil McNulty, “Chelsea 2-1 Liverpool”, in BBC Sport
  8. (slang, transitive) To succeed in having sexual relations with; to score.
    • Too ugly to ever land a chick.
  9. (transitive) To deliver (a blow).
    • If you land a knockout blow, you’ll win the match.
  10. (intransitive) To connect (to arrive at an intended target).
    • If the punches land, you might lose a few teeth!
    • Vice President J. D. Vance has lashed out at [Gavin] Newsom, telling Fox that the Californian’s attacks aren’t landing, because his trolling “ignores the fundamental genius of President Trump’s political success, which is that he’s authentic”; […].2025 August 22, Tom Nichols, “MAGA World Is So Close to Getting It”, in The Atlantic
  11. (figuratively, intransitive) To go down well with an audience.
    • Some of the comedian's jokes failed to land.
    • We told an Amelia Earhart joke yesterday—did not go great with the audience. Someone wrote: "You can't be surprised when an Amelia Earhart joke doesn't land."2023 January 13, Anonymous ("Jackal Comment"), 11:08 from the start, in CORRECTIONS Episode 68: Week of Monday, January 9 (Late Night with Seth Meyers), YouTube

Noun (2)

land (uncountable)

  1. lant; urine

Proper noun capitalized: Land

Land

  1. A surname from Middle English.
    • After the success of Secret of Monkey Island (1990), composer Michael Land longed for a more flexible system to integrate his music into a game.2012, Peter Moormann, Music and Game: Perspectives on a Popular Alliance, page 82

land meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

land in Hindi

part of Earth that is not covered by oceans or other bodies of water
भूमि bhūmi, ज़मीन zamīn
country or region
देश deś, मुल्क mulk
to descend to a surface, especially from the air
अवतरण करना avatraṇ karnā, उतरना utarnā

land in Tamil

country or region
நாடு nāṭu, தேசம் tēcam

land in Marathi

part of Earth that is not covered by oceans or other bodies of water
जमीन j̈amīn
real estate or landed property
जमीन jamīn
country or region
देश deś, भूमी bhūmī

land in Urdu

part of Earth that is not covered by oceans or other bodies of water
زَمِین zamīn
country or region
دیش deś, مُلْک mulk
More languagesFewer languages
land in Bengali
ভূমি bhumi, জমি jomi, জমিন jomin, দেশ deś
land in Telugu
భూమి bhūmi, వాలిపో vālipō
land in Malayalam
കര kara, നിലം nilaṁ, ഊഴി ūḻi, ഗ്ലൗ glau
land in Kannada
ನಾಡು nāḍu, ಜಮೀನು jamīnu
land in Punjabi
ਜ਼ਮੀਨ zamīn
land in Gujarati
જમીન jamīn
land in Odia
ଜମି jami
land in Sanskrit
भूमि bhūmi
land in Sinhala
රට raṭa
land in Assamese
দেশ dex, মাটি mati, নমা noma, নামা nama
land in Nepali
जमिन jamin
land in Pashto
کشور kišwár
land in Tagalog
lupa, lupain
land in Arabic
بَرّ barr, أَرْض ʔarḍ, يابِسة yābisa, بِلَاد bilād
land in Malay
tanah, darat, bumi, mendarat
land in Indonesian
tanah, bumi, darat, negara
land in Thai
ดิน din, ภู puu, ประเทศ bprà-têet, เมือง mʉʉang
land in Vietnamese
đất, quốc gia, tổ quốc, hạ cánh
land in Myanmar
ကုန်း kun:, နိုင်ငံ nuingngam, မြေ mre
Sindhi
ملڪ mlk
Kashmiri
مُلک mulk

Examples of land in a sentence

  • I'll undertake to land them on our coast.c. 1591–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories...
  • Siemens has landed a contract to upgrade signalling on the entire 170km (105-mile) S-Bane suburban network in Copenhagen to pave the way for fully automated trains.2024 May 1, “Network News: Danes plan fully automated trains”, in RAIL, number 1008, page 18:
  • At 30, I landed my first real foothold: an assistant job at a major publishing house.2026 April 22, Jillian Sanders, “The Danger of Surrendering Your Financial Independence in a Relationship”, in TIME, archived from the...

All 40 example sentences with land

Synonyms of land

Forms of land

Noun
plurallands
Verb
third-person singular presentlands
present participlelanding
past participlelanded
pastlanded

Past tense of land: landed

Plural of land: lands

Origin of land

From Middle English lond, land, from Old English land, from Proto-West Germanic *land, from Proto-Germanic *landą (“land”), from Proto-Indo-European *lendʰ- (“land, heath”). Cognates Cognate with Scots laund (“land”), Yola lhoan, lloan, loan, londe, lone (“land”), North Frisian loun, luin, lun, Lön, lönj, löön (“land”), Saterland Frisian Lound (“land”), West Frisian lân (“land”), Limburgish Land, landj, Laïnt (“land”), Dutch land (“land, country”), Luxembourgish and German Land (“land, country, state”), Vilamovian łaond (“land”), Danish, Elfdalian, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish land (“land, country, shore, territory”). Non-Germanic cognates include Old Irish lann (“heath”), Welsh llan (“enclosure”), Breton lann (“heath”), Old Church Slavonic лѧдо (lędo), from Proto-Slavic *lędo (“heath, wasteland”), French lande (“heath”) and Albanian lëndinë (“heath, grassland”).

From Middle English *land, from Old English hland. More at lant.

Words formed from land

Phrases with land

177 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with land

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about land

What does land mean?
Land means the part of Earth which is not covered by oceans or other bodies of water.
What is land in Hindi?
Land in Hindi is भूमि (bhūmi), ज़मीन (zamīn), देश (deś). See Land meaning in Hindi.
How do you use land in a sentence?
I'll undertake to land them on our coast.
What part of speech is land?
Land can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce land?
Land is pronounced /lænd/.
What is the plural of land?
The plural of land is lands.

Words near land in the dictionary

  1. Lancours
  2. Lancs
  3. Lanctot
  4. Lanctots
  5. Lanczos algorithm
  6. land
  7. land acknowledgement
  8. land acknowledgements
  9. land acknowledgment
  10. land acknowledgments
  11. land agent

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: land (page history and authors); Land (page history and authors); ഊഴി (Malayalam) (page history and authors); ಜಮೀನು (Kannada) (page history and authors); ଜମି (Odia) (page history and authors); দেশ (Assamese) (page history and authors); کشور (Pashto) (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: en-us-land.ogg.

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