[f. TABLE sb. + LAND sb.] An elevated region of land with a generally level surface, of large or considerable extent; a lofty plain; a plateau.
1697. Dampier, Voy., I. xix. 531. The most remarkable Land at Sea is a high Mountain, steep to the Sea, with a flat even top, which is called the Table Land [at the Cape of Good Hope].
1774. Cook, Voy. S. Pole, III. iv. (1777), II. 50. At sun-rise we discovered a high table land (an island) bearing E. by S.
1834. Miss Mitford, Village, Ser. I. 70 (Lucy). The common … is one of a series of heathy hills, or rather a high table land, pierced in one part by a ravine of marshy ground.
1899. Baring-Gould, Bk. of West, I. x. 155. The great irregular tableland of Dartmoor, over a thousand feet above the sea.
b. Without a or pl.: Elevated level ground.
1836. W. Irving, Astoria (1849), 248. These lofty plats of table-land seem to form a peculiar feature in the American continents.
1869. Tozer, Highl. Turkey, II. 190. One long line of table-land…, half mountain, half plain.
c. fig.
1820. Hazlitt, Lect. Dram. Lit., 12. He [Shakspere] indeed overlooks and commands the admiration of posterity, but he does it from the table land of the age in which he lived.
1876. Geo. Eliot, Dan. Der., III. xxii. A healthy Briton on the central table-land of life.
