champaign

Alternative forms

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

Etymology

From Old French champaigne, from Late Latin campānia.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈtʃampeɪn/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈtʃæmpeɪn/
• Rhymes: -eɪn

Noun

champaign (plural champaigns)

1. (geography, archaic) Open countryside, or an area of open countryside.
   • 1485, Sir Thomas Malory, chapter vj, in Le Morte Darthur, book V:

     And therwith torned theyr horses and rode ouer waters and thurgh woodes tyl they came to theyre busshement / where as syr Lyonel and syr Bedeuer were houyng / The romayns folowed fast after on horsbak and on foote ouer a chāpayn vnto a 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, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy, Oxford: Printed by Iohn Lichfield and Iames Short, for Henry Cripps, OCLC 216894069; The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd corrected and augmented edition, Oxford: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, 1624, OCLC 54573970, (please specify |partition=1, 2, or 3):
     , 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

champaign (comparative more champaign, superlative most champaign)

1. Pertaining to open countryside; unforested, flat.
   • 1603, John Florio, transl.; Michel de Montaigne, The Essayes, […], printed at London: […] Edward Blount […], OCLC 946730821:
     , 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.