Learn English – the meaning and definition of “-scape”

meaningsuffixes

The words "landscape", "seascape", "cityscape", "spacescape", "sandscape", "skyscape" and many more at Wikitionary have a common -scape suffix.

I've found in the Online Cambridge dictionary that
-scape suffix means: used to form nouns referring to a wide view of a place, often one represented in a picture

Is it the only meaning and definition?

Best Answer

-scape is not a native English suffix. It arises by extension from the term landscape, meaning a painting of a rural or remote area; this was taken into English in the 17th century from Dutch landschap, at a period when the Netherlands were perhaps the major center of artistic innovation in Europe.

  • This is a narrow, specialized sense of Dutch landschap, which generally means "region" and is composed of land, pretty much the same as the English cognate with the same spelling, and -schap, a suffix cognate with English -ship having the general sense "state, condition".

In English, however, all senses of -scape are extended from the art sense, sometimes literally (seascape, for instance) and sometimes figuratively (mindscape, soundscape).

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