Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A broad, level, open expanse of land.
  • noun A meadow.
  • noun A cultivated expanse of land, especially one devoted to a particular crop.
  • noun A portion of land or a geologic formation containing a specified natural resource.
  • noun A wide unbroken expanse, as of ice.
  • noun A battleground.
  • noun Archaic A battle.
  • noun The scene or an area of military operations or maneuvers.
  • noun A background area, as on a flag, painting, or coin.
  • noun Heraldry The background of a shield or one of the divisions of the background.
  • noun An area or setting of practical activity or application outside an office, school, factory, or laboratory.
  • noun An area or region where business activities are conducted.
  • noun An area in which an athletic event takes place, especially the area inside or near to a running track, where field events are held.
  • noun In baseball, the positions on defense or the ability to play defense.
  • noun In baseball, one of the three sections of the outfield.
  • noun A range, area, or subject of human activity, interest, or knowledge.
  • noun The contestants or participants in a competition or athletic event, especially those other than the favorite or winner.
  • noun The body of riders following a pack of hounds in hunting.
  • noun The people running in an election for a political office.
  • noun Mathematics A set of elements having two operations, designated addition and multiplication, satisfying the conditions that multiplication is distributive over addition, that the set is a group under addition, and that the elements with the exception of the additive identity form a group under multiplication.
  • noun Physics A region of space characterized by a physical property, such as gravitational or electromagnetic force or fluid pressure, having a determinable value at every point in the region.
  • noun The usually circular area in which the image is rendered by the lens system of an optical instrument.
  • noun An element of a database record in which one piece of information is stored.
  • noun A space, as on an online form or request for information, that accepts the input of text.
  • adjective Growing, cultivated, or living in fields or open land.
  • adjective Made, used, or carried on in the field.
  • adjective Working, operating, or active in the field.
  • intransitive verb Sports To catch or pick up (a ball) and often make a throw to another player, especially in baseball.
  • intransitive verb To respond to or deal with.
  • intransitive verb Sports To place in the playing area.
  • intransitive verb To nominate in an election.
  • intransitive verb To put into action; deploy.
  • intransitive verb To enter (data) into a field.
  • intransitive verb To play as a fielder.
  • idiom (take the field) To begin or resume activity, as in a sport or military operations.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A piece of cleared or cultivated ground, or of land suitable for pasture or tillage; specifically, any part of a farm inclosed or set apart from the rest, as for a special use, except a garden, a wood-lot, or an orchard, and the appurtenances of the buildings: as, a wheat-field, or a field of potatoes.
  • noun Any piece of open ground set apart or used for a special purpose: as, ableaching-field.
  • noun Specifically In base-ball, cricket, and similar games: The ground on which the game is played; more specifically, in base-ball, that part of the ground on which the fielders play, and known as in-field, out-field, right-, center-, and left-field, according to the station of the corresponding players. See .
  • noun The fielders collectively: as, the work of the field was excellent.
  • noun Any continuous extent of surface considered as analogous to a level expanse of ground: as, a field of ice or snow. See ice-field.
  • noun Specifically The ground or blank space on which figures are drawn: as, the field or ground of a picture.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English feld, from Old English; see pelə- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English field, feeld, feld, from Old English feld ("field; open or cultivated land, plain; battlefield"), from Proto-Germanic *felþuz, *felþaz, *felþan (“field”), from Proto-Indo-European *pelh₂- (“field, plain”). Cognate with Scots feld, feild ("field"), North Frisian fjild ("field"), West Frisian fjild ("field"), Dutch veld ("field"), German Feld ("field"), Swedish fält ("field"). Related also to Old English folde ("earth, land, territory"), Old English folm ("palm of the hand"). More at fold.

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  • In heraldry, the surface of an escutcheon or shield on which the ‘charge’ is displayed. Also the surface of one of the divisions in the shield.

    Usage: 1610 J. GUILLIM Heraldry II. ii. (1660) 52 The Field is the whole Surface...of the Shield over-spread with some Metall, Colour, or Furre, and comprehendeth in it the Charge.

    February 5, 2007

  • Afterward he will field knotty questions from the audience on whether originality is really possible, the tension between honor and happiness, and the evolutionary upside of solitude.

    January 18, 2018

  • Afterward he will field knotty questions from the audience on whether originality is really possible, the tension between honor and happiness, and the evolutionary upside of solitude.

    January 18, 2018