A broad, flat area of land; can refer to natural grasslands, moors, or prairies. Common in geographical and descriptive contexts.
Wildflowers bloom all over this plain.
We drove across the Great Plains of America.
A vast plain stretched out before us.
They crossed the plain on horseback.
草原 focuses on the grassy vegetation covering the land, whereas 平原 emphasizes the flatness of the terrain itself.
平原 is a formal, geographical term for a flat plain, whereas 原 is a broader, more general word for open or uncultivated land.
平原 describes a vast, flat plain on a geographical scale, whereas 野原 is a smaller, everyday open field.
山地 refers to mountainous, uneven terrain, the geographic opposite of the flat, open 平原.
Compound of 平 (flat) and 原 (field, plain). The reading is on'yomi, suggesting a Sino-Japanese origin.