field
field
(fēld) noun
Abbr. fld.
1.
a. A broad, level, open expanse of land. b. A meadow: a field of buttercups. c. A cultivated expanse of land, especially one devoted to a particular crop: a field of corn. d. A portion of land or a geologic formation containing a specified natural resource. e. A wide, unbroken expanse, as of ice.
2. a. A battleground. b. A battle. c. The scene or an area of military operations or maneuvers. d. A military area away from headquarters.
3. a. A background area, as on a flag, painting, or coin: a blue insignia on a field of red. b. Heraldry. The background of a shield or one of the divisions of the background.
4. Sports. a. An area in which an athletic event takes place. b. The portion of a playing field having specific dimensions on which the action of a game takes place. c. All the contestants or participants in an event, especially all the contestants except the favorite or the winner in a contest of more than two. d. The members of a team engaged in active play. e. The body of riders following a pack of hounds in hunting.
5. a. An area of human activity or interest: several fields of endeavor. b. A topic, a subject, or an area of academic interest or specialization. c. Profession, employment, or business. d. An area or a setting of practical activity or application outside an office, a school, a factory, or a laboratory: biologists working in the field; a product tested in the field. e. An area or a region where business activities are conducted: sales representatives in the field.
6. Mathematics. A set of elements having two operations, designated addition and multiplication, satisfying the conditions that multiplication is distributive over addition and that both operations are associative and commutative for all elements of the set, with the exception of the additive identity element, which is not commutative in respect to multiplication.
7. Physics. A region of space characterized by a physical property, such as gravitational or electromagnetic force or fluid pressure, having a determinable value at every point in the region.
8. The usually circular area in which the image is rendered by the lens system of an optical instrument. Also called field of view.
9. Computer Science. a. A defined area of a storage medium, such as a set of bit locations or a set of adjacent columns on a punch card, used to record a type of information consistently. b. An element of a database record in which one piece of information is stored.
adjective
1.
Growing, cultivated, or living in fields or open land.
2.
Made, used, or carried on in the field: field operations.
3.
Working, operating, or active in the field: field representatives of a firm.
verb
fielded
, fielding, fields
verb
, transitive
1.
Sports. a. To retrieve (a ball) and perform the required maneuver, especially in baseball. b. To place in the field to play: field a team.
2. To give an unrehearsed response to: fielded tough questions from the press.
3. a. To place in competition. b. To put into action: field an army of campaign workers.
verb
, intransitive
Sports.
To play as a fielder.
idiom.
take the field
To begin or resume activity, as in military operations or in a sport.
[Middle English, from Old English feld.]
Synonyms:
field, bailiwick, domain, province, realm, sphere, territory. The central meaning shared by these nouns is "an area of activity, thought, study, or interest": the field of comparative literature; considers psychology her bailiwick; the domain of physics; the province of politics; the realm of constitutional law; the nation's sphere of influence; the territory of historical research.