Link Centre Dictionary

field

UK/ˈfi(ː)ld/ US/ˈfɪi̯ɫd/ common
noun (17) verb (4)

noun

1.

a piece of land cleared of trees and usually enclosed

  • “he planted a field of wheat”
2.

a region where a battle is being (or has been) fought

  • “they made a tour of Civil War battlefields”
Synonyms
3.

somewhere (away from a studio or office or library or laboratory) where practical work is done or data is collected

  • “anthropologists do much of their work in the field”
4.

a branch of knowledge

  • “in what discipline is his doctorate?”
  • “teachers should be well trained in their subject”
  • “anthropology is the study of human beings”
Synonyms
5.

the space around a radiating body within which its electromagnetic oscillations can exert force on another similar body not in contact with it

Synonyms
6.

a particular kind of commercial enterprise

  • “they are outstanding in their field”
Synonyms
7.

a particular environment or walk of life

  • “his social sphere is limited”
  • “it was a closed area of employment”
  • “he”
Synonyms
8.

a piece of land prepared for playing a game

  • “the home crowd cheered when Princeton took the field”
Synonyms
9.

extensive tract of level open land

  • “they emerged from the woods onto a vast open plain”
  • “he longed for the fields of his youth”
Synonyms
10.

(mathematics) a set of elements such that addition and multiplication are commutative and associative and multiplication is distributive over addition and there are two elements 0 and 1

  • “the set of all rational numbers is a field”
11.

a region in which active military operations are in progress

  • “the army was in the field awaiting action”
  • “he served in the Vietnam theater for three years”
Synonyms
12.

all of the horses in a particular horse race

13.

all the competitors in a particular contest or sporting event

14.

a geographic region (land or sea) under which something valuable is found

  • “the diamond fields of South Africa”
15.

(computer science) a set of one or more adjacent characters comprising a unit of information

16.

the area that is visible (as through an optical instrument)

Synonyms
17.

a place where planes take off and land

Synonyms

verb

1.

catch or pick up (balls) in baseball or cricket

2.

play as a fielder

3.

answer adequately or successfully

  • “The lawyer fielded all questions from the press”
4.

select (a team or individual player) for a game

  • “The Patriots fielded a young new quarterback for the Rose Bowl”

Origin

From Middle English feeld, feld (“field”), from Old English feld (“field”), from Proto-West Germanic *felþu (“field”), from Proto-Germanic *felþuz (“field”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *pleh₂- (“field, plain”) or *pleth₂- (“flat”) (with schwebeablaut). Cognates Cognate with Scots feld, feild (“field”), North Frisian fial, fälj (“field”), Saterland Frisian Fäild (“field”), West Frisian fjild (“field”), Dutch veld (“field”), German and Luxembourgish Feld (“field”), Vilamovian fald (“field”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk felt (“field”), Swedish fält (“field”), Finnish pelto (“field”), Asturian and Leonese platu (“plate”), Aragonese and Spanish plato (“plate”), Catalan plat (“plate”), French plat (“dish”), Galician, Mirandese, and Portuguese prato (“plate”), Italian piatto (“plate”), Latin *plattus (“flattened”), Greek πλατύς (platýs, “wide, broad”). Doublet of plate. Related also to Middle English flat (“flat”), Old English folde (“earth, land, territory”), Old English folm (“palm of the hand”). More at flat, fold. Not related to English felt.

Phrases

  • Field in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)
  • field off
  • field out
  • field up

Related words

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WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.