Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An overcultivated field allowed to lie fallow.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Land formerly cultivated; a field which has become exhausted by continuous cropping without renovation and left to run wild; specifically, in the United States, land cultivated by the Indians before the beginning of colonization by the whites.
Etymologies
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Examples
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Initial floristic composition, a factor in old-field vegetation development.
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Direct and indirect effects of predation and predation risk in old-field interaction webs.
Top-down control 2008
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Some farmland has been abandoned this century and old-field succession is gradually returning these areas to forest cover.
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The old-field school, the private tutor, the high school, whose excellence in Virginia I can not praise too much, the college, the university, led the young mind by easy stages to its full intellectual maturity.
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"Well, old-field pine is good enough manure for a man who has plenty of land and can take his time."
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 11, No. 25, April, 1873 Various
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On October 1, 1858, having completed my course at the old-field school, my father sent me to Hanover Academy then owned by Lewis M. Coleman.
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Catawba were sent to what were called "old-field schools."
Historic Boyhoods Rupert Sargent Holland 1915
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It is respectfully submitted to the wisdom above mentioned, whether our good old-field schools are not abundantly sufficient for all our necessities.
The Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina; A Documentary History, 1790-1840. Vol. I Charles Lee 1908
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The old-field plums and the wild strawberries and cherries, mulberries and blackberries were worth more then than gold, and it made no difference who was priest or president, or how rich was Astor or Girard or any of the nabors, or whether
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These old-field sap pines, when allowed to grow and reach a large size, form a heartwood as large and equally as good as that of the original growth of pine in the forest.
North Carolina and its Resources. North Carolina. Board of Agriculture. 1896
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