Terrace

How to spell terrace

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce terrace

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does terrace mean?

1. nounA flat, often paved outdoor area beside a building or in a garden, used for sitting or dining.
2. nounA row of similar houses joined together, sharing side walls.
3. nounA raised, level strip of land cut into a slope, often for growing crops.

Terrace in a sentence

• They served lunch on the sunny terrace overlooking the bay.

• They bought a narrow Victorian terrace near the station.

• The farmers grew rice on each flooded terrace of the hillside.

• The hotel terrace was fitted with heaters for cooler evenings.

• Every house on the terrace shares the same front railing.

• Vines covered every terrace on the steep valley side.

Where does terrace come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word goes back to the Latin terra, meaning 'earth' or 'land', the same root that gives us 'territory', 'terrain' and 'terrestrial'. From terra the Romans formed a feminine adjective terracea, describing something made of or belonging to earth, and this passed into Old French as terrasse, used for a raised platform or bank of earth. English borrowed it in the late 1300s, originally for a raised flat mound or walkway of packed earth in a garden. Over the centuries the sense broadened to include any paved outdoor platform beside a house, the stepped levels cut into a hillside for farming, and, in Britain, a connected row of houses fronting such a level. The double 'r' is the spelling trap, and remembering the earthy terra root helps fix it.

How the word is built

• terr- (from Latin terra: earth, land)
• -ace (noun suffix via French -asse)