terrace - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

Borrowed from French terrasse, from Old Occitan terrassa, from terra (“land”). Doublet of terrasse.

terrace (plural terraces)

Marine terrace

Or, on a terrace vert a tulip gules, slipped proper and crowned of the first — Van Gennep (see quote).

  1. A flat open area on the topmost floor of a building or apartment
  2. A platform that extends outwards from a building.
    • 1909, Archibald Marshall [pseudonym; Arthur Hammond Marshall], “A Court Ball”, in The Squire’s Daughter, New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead and Company, published 1919, →OCLC, page 9:
      They stayed together during three dances, went out on to the terrace, explored wherever they were permitted to explore, paid two visits to the buffet, and enjoyed themselves much in the same way as if they had been school-children surreptitiously breaking loose from an assembly of grown-ups.
  3. (agriculture) A raised, flat-topped bank of earth with sloping sides, especially one of a series for farming or leisure; a similar natural area of ground, often next to a river.
  4. (geology) A step-like landform; (sometimes) remnants of floodplains.
    Hyponyms: fluvial terrace, kame terrace, marine terrace, lacustrine terrace, structural terrace, travertine terrace
  5. A row of residential houses with no gaps between them; a group of row houses.
  6. A street with such a group of houses in it.
  7. (UK, informal) A single house in such a group.
    Synonym: terraced house
    • 2016, Jane Killick, Mind Power: Perceivers #4:
      The cameraman's pace slowed down as he approached what his mind said was where Sian lived. Like all the other houses in the street, it was a Victorian terrace with a postage stamp of an overgrown garden between its front wall and the street.
  8. (in the plural, chiefly British) The standing area of a sports stadium.
    Synonym: terracing
  9. (chiefly India) The roof of a building, especially if accessible to the residents. Often used for drying laundry, sun-drying foodstuffs, exercise, or sleeping outdoors in hot weather.
  10. (heraldry) A champagne, (an ordinary occupying) the base of the shield.

platform that extends outwards from a building

(agriculture) raised, flat-topped bank of earth with sloping sides

row of connected residential houses

terrace (third-person singular simple present terraces, present participle terracing, simple past and past participle terraced)

  1. To provide something with a terrace.
  2. To form something into a terrace.

to provide with a terrace