Skip to main content
Serengeti Plain

Serengeti Plain

6.4
A large flat grassland in northern Tanzania with many wild animals
  • proper noun
translation icon : llano del Serengeti
  • The vast Serengeti Plain offers breathtaking views and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Examples

  • The danger of the night before is overcome by the sheer beauty of the place—it really is like the Serengeti Plain.

    Fiction book (1993)
  • The vast Serengeti Plain stretches beyond.

    Academic text (2008)
  • We were sitting in his living room, the three of us, eating ice cream and watching a PBS show about lions on the Serengeti Plain.

    Fiction book (2001)
  • The Serengeti Plain is famous for the annual migration of wildebeest.

  • During our safari, we saw many animals in the Serengeti Plain, including elephants and zebras.

Synonyms

Serengeti
vsSerengeti Plain
13 4.4

A vast plain in northern Tanzania known for many wild animals and yearly migrations

is the identical place but uses the fuller geographic phrase
savanna
vsSerengeti Plain
12 4.2

A large flat area of grass with a few trees in warm places

is a specific Tanzanian plain known for wildlife and annual migrations

Surface Forms

Morphology

Serengeti + plain

The name is fully compositional: 'Serengeti' identifies the region and 'plain' denotes an extensive open area, so a learner who knows both constituents will infer it is the plain called Serengeti (a large open area known for wildlife). This place-name + landscape noun pattern is cross-linguistically common and follows normal noun-noun naming conventions, making the meaning transparent to B1 learners who know the parts.

Etymology

Serengeti Plain may come from a Maasai word meaning 'endless plain'. That picture of a wide, flat grassland full of roaming animals explains why the name now means the large area in northern Tanzania famous for the yearly wildebeest migration.