landscape

Etymology

From an alteration (due to Dutch landschap) of earlier landskip, lantschip, from Middle English *landschippe, *landschapp, from Old English landsċipe, landsċeap (“region, district, tract of land”), equivalent to land + -ship; in some senses from Dutch landschap (“region, district, province, landscape”), from Middle Dutch landscap, lantscap (“region”), from Old Dutch *landskepi, *landskapi (“region”). Cognate with Scots landskape, landskep, landskip (“landscape”), West Frisian lânskip (“landscape”), Low German landschop (“landscape, district”), German Landschaft (“landscape, countryside, scenery”), Swedish landskap (“landscape, scenery, province”), Icelandic landskapur (“countryside”).

noun

1. A portion of land or territory which the eye can comprehend in a single view, including all the objects it contains.
   Ahead the flanks of the Pennines gleamed faintly in the moonlight, looking as though they themselves were part of some dry and deserted lunar landscape. 1960 January, G. Freeman Allen, “"Condor"—British Railways' fastest freight train”, in Trains Illustrated, page 48
2. A sociological aspect of a physical area.
   In light of such conceptualisations of the power of linguistic landscapes, we set out to examine the connection between the visual landscape and the spoken landscape in our institution[.] 2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, →DOI, page 2
3. A picture representing a real or imaginary scene by land or sea, the main subject being the general aspect of nature, as fields, hills, forests, water, etc.
   The mother, Ekaterina Pavlovna, who at one time had been handsome, but now, asthmatic, depressed, vague, and over-feeble for her years, tried to entertain me with conversation about painting. Having heard from her daughter that I might come to Shelkovka, she had hurriedly recalled two or three of my landscapes which she had seen in exhibitions in Moscow, and now asked what I meant to express by them. 1917, Anton Chekhov, translated by Constance Garnett, The Darling and Other Stories, Project Gutenberg, published 9 September 2004, page 71
4. The pictorial aspect of a country.
5. (computing, printing, uncountable) a mode of printing where the horizontal sides are longer than the vertical sides
6. A space, indoor or outdoor and natural or man-made (as in "designed landscape")
7. (figurative) a situation that is presented, a scenario
   The software patent landscape has changed considerably in the last years

verb

1. To create or maintain a landscape.