Tundra
noun /ˈtʌn.drə/ — A vast, treeless Arctic or sub-Arctic plain
Definition
A vast, flat, treeless landscape in Arctic or sub-Arctic regions — where the ground is permanently frozen beneath the surface and only low-lying plants survive.
Beyond the definition
The landscape of absolute exposure. Nothing in the tundra grows tall enough to shelter you. Its beauty is the beauty of having no place to hide.
Origin & history
From Russian 'тундра' (tundra), from Kildin Sami 'tūndâr' (uplands, treeless plain). The word came into English through Russian exploration of Siberia.
Example sentences
Illustrative sentences for learning, not verified community posts or sourced quotations.
They drove across the tundra for three days without seeing a tree.
The tundra has a particular silence that you can't experience in any other landscape — it's the silence of enormous distance.
There are people for whom the tundra is home — a landscape of astonishing abundance, once you learn to read it.
Synonyms
Arctic plain, permafrost zone, barrens, taiga
Antonyms
forest, jungle
Related words
Word in the Wild
See how this word appears in life, language and stories.
Illustrative sentences and imagined stories for learning — not verified sightings, interviews, or sourced quotations.
Fictional scene
Vast Open Desert Night
An adult traveler sits by a campfire in a vast, open desert at night, with a clear star-filled sky stretching to the horizon.
Tundra is a vast, flat, treeless landscape where only low-lying plants survive. While the image shows a desert, the vast, horizontal scale and the sense of an enormous, sparsely populated landscape at night mirror the openness and emptiness associated with the tundra, serving as a conceptual visual analogy for extreme, horizontal space.
Image credit: Wordspun · AI-generated conceptual illustration