Champaign

Pronunciation

• UK IPA: /ˈtʃampeɪn/
• US IPA: /ˈtʃæmpeɪn/
• Rhymes: -eɪn

Alternative forms

• champeyne 15th c.
• champaine 15th-17th c.
• champain

Origin

From Old French champaigne, from Latin campānia.

Full definition of champaign

Noun

1. (geography, archaic) Open countryside, or an area of open countryside.
• 1485, Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur, Book V:Then the Romaynes followed faste on horsebak and on foote over a fayre champeyne unto a fayre wood.
• 1605, William Shakespeare, King Lear, I.i:Of all these bounds even from this line to this,
  With shadowy forests and with champaigns riched,
  With plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads,
  We make thee lady.
• 1621, Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, II.ii.3:So Segrave in Leicestershire ... is sited in a champaign at the edge of the wolds, and more barren than the villages about it, yet no place likely yields a better air.
2. (obsolete) A battlefield.

Adjective

1. Pertaining to open countryside; unforested, flat.
• 1603, John Florio, translating Michel de Montaigne, Essays, Folio Society 2006, vol. 1 p. 206:They are seated alongst the sea-coast, encompassed toward the land with huge and steepie mountains, having betweene both, a hundred leagues or thereabouts of open and champaine ground.

Related terms

• champagne