Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of the open grazing areas of southern Africa.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In South Africa, an unforested or thinly forested tract of land or region; grass country. The higher tracts of this character, entirely destitute of timber, are sometimes called the high veldt; areas thinly covered with undergrowth, scrub, or bush are known as bush-veldt.
Wiktionary
- n. alternative form of veld.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A region or tract of land; esp., the open field, thinly forested or with bushes and shrubs; grass country.
WordNet 3.0
- n. elevated open grassland in southern Africa
Etymologies
- Afrikaans veld, from Middle Dutch, field; see pelə-2 in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“The word "veldt" is Dutch, and the word "illimitable" is Double Dutch.”
“Colonial troops were valued for their ability to “shoot and ride,” and they performed well on the veldt, which is not unlike Gippsland, the Wimmera, or the Riverina.”
“Six major land masses characterized uniformly with low mountains, plains areas studded with grasses and small trees, best described as a veldt.”
“The veldt is a void to us, all darkness, and it hides a threat which, as it may fall anywhere, must be guarded against everywhere.”
“The dry grass of the veldt, which is always catching fire, was burning between us and the Boers; long lines of low smouldering fire, eating their way slowly along, and sending volumes of smoke drifting downward, obscuring the view.”
“Quantities of prisoners were made, and over a thousand burghers were said to be slain -- in fact, the veldt was a complete parquet of dead Dutchmen.”
“To advance was impossible; each depression in the veldt was a sheet of water, in places inches deep.”
“Negotiations, then, must not be unduly hurried while the veldt was a bare russet-coloured dust-swept plain.”
“South African veldt, which is said to give a greater feeling of infinity than the ocean even.”
“The Rand gold fields are a stupendous marvel, and they make all other gold fields small, but I was not a stranger to gold-mining; the veldt was a noble thing to see, but it was only another and lovelier variety of our Great Plains; the natives were very far from being uninteresting, but they were not new; and as for the towns, I could find my way without a guide through the most of them because I had learned the streets, under other names, in towns just like them in other lands; but the diamond mine was a wholly fresh thing, a splendid and absorbing novelty.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘veldt’.
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Visual landscapes
texture, stipple, variegated, topography, denuded, granular, pebbly, tundra, veldt, savannah, steppes, mesa and 5 more...
Casey "He wandered through the flattened veldt of the daydreaming cactacae mind." From Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. Dec 5, 2011