Mesa

How to spell mesa

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce mesa

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mesa mean?

1. nounAn isolated hill or mountain with a flat top and steep sides, common in arid regions of the American Southwest.

Mesa in a sentence

• The desert highway wound around a towering mesa of red rock.

• Hikers reached the top of the mesa just before sunrise.

Where does mesa come from?

Language of origin: Spanish

This word comes directly from Spanish mesa, which simply means 'table'. The Spanish word descends from the Latin mensa, also meaning 'table', the everyday surface on which Romans ate and worked. Spanish-speaking explorers and settlers in the American Southwest applied the homely word for a table to the dramatic landscape they found: broad hills with flat tops and steep, cliff-like sides that resemble a tabletop raised above the surrounding plain. English speakers borrowed the term during the 1700s as the territory of the West became more widely known and described. Because the word stayed close to its plain Spanish form, the spelling is refreshingly straightforward, a single s and the familiar -a ending of so many Spanish loanwords.

How the word is built

• mesa (Spanish for table, from Latin mensa: table)