mesa

Etymology

First attested 1759, from Spanish mesa (“table”), from Latin mēnsa. Doublet of mensa.

noun

1. Flat area of land or plateau higher than other land, with one or more clifflike edges.
   A few more miles of hot sand and gravel and red stone brought us around a low mesa to the Little Colorado River.
   Those multitoned buttes and mesas [of the Grand Canyon], and that incandescent sequence of colorful bands that make one of the natural wonders of the world so grand, can also be found over 100 million miles away [on Mars]. 27 November 2013, John Grotzinger, “The world of Mars [print version: International Herald Tribune Magazine, 2013, p. 36]”, in The New York Times