meadow

Etymology

From Middle English medowe, medewe, medwe (also mede > Modern English mead), from Old English mǣdwe, inflected form of mǣd (see mead), from Proto-Germanic *mēdwō, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂met- (“to mow, reap”), enlargement of *h₂meh₁-. See also West Frisian miede, dialectal Dutch made, dialectal German Matte (“mountain pasture”); also Welsh medi, Latin metere, Ancient Greek ἄμητος (ámētos, “reaping”). More at mow.

noun

1. A field or pasture; a piece of land covered or cultivated with grass, usually intended to be mown for hay.
   […]belts of thin white mist streaked the brown plough land in the hollow where Appleby could see the pale shine of a winding river. Across that in turn, meadow and coppice rolled away past the white walls of a village bowered in orchards,[…] 1907, Harold Bindloss, chapter 1, in The Dust of Conflict
   Our part of the veranda did not hang over the gorge, but edged the meadow where half a dozen large and sleek horses had stopped grazing to join us. 1956, Delano Ames, chapter 7, in Crime out of Mind
2. Low land covered with coarse grass or rank herbage near rivers and in marshy places by the sea.
   the salt meadows near Newark Bay
   European adventurers found themselves within a watery world, a tapestry of streams, channels, wetlands, lakes and lush riparian meadows enriched by floodwaters from the Mississippi River. 2013-01, Nancy Langston, “The Fraught History of a Watery World”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 1, page 59