Landscape is Dutch, borrowed about 1600, and it came in as a technical term of painting: Dutch landschap was the painters' word for scenery as distinct from the subject of a picture. English took it because Dutch painters were the acknowledged masters of the genre, and for a century a landscape in English meant a painting, not a place.
The word is transparently Germanic and English has the same materials natively. Old English had landscipe, "region," built from land plus the ending that survives as -ship, and German still has Landschaft. English simply lost its own version and reborrowed the Dutch one with a new artistic sense attached. The general meaning of a view of rural scenery is from 1725, and the flat non-aesthetic sense — a tract of land with its characteristics — only from 1886.
landscape (n.) c. 1600, "painting representing an extensive view of rural or natural scenery," from Dutch landschap "landscape," in art, a secondary sense from Middle Dutch landscap "region," from land "land" (see land ) + -scap "-ship, condition" (see -ship ). A painters' term in Dutch to distinguish scenery from the subject of the painting. Blount (1656) defines it as "an expressing of the Land, by Hills, Woods, Castles, Valleys, Rivers, Cities, &c. as far as may be shewed in our Horizon." The general sense of "view or prospect of rural scenery, more or less extensive" (Gray's glimmering landscape ) is by 1725. The non-aesthetic meaning "tract of land with its distinguishing characteristics" is attested by 1886. Similar formation in Old English landscipe "region," Old High German lantscaf , German Landschaft , Old Norse landskapr , Danish landskab "a region, district, province." Derivative Skyscape is attested by 1817; townscape by 1980. also from c. 1600 landscape (v.) "to lay out lawns, gardens, etc., plant trees for the sake of beautification," by 1916, from landscape (n.) in its non-artistic sense. Earlier the verb was used in an artistic sense, "to represent in a landscape setting" (1660s) but this was rare. Related: Landscaped ; landscaping . also from 1916
landscape came in through Later and wider borrowings, and its spelling follows that family's conventions.
What gives it away on the page
| sea, trade, and art vocabulary | Dutch and Low German, from centuries of shipping and painting.skipper, deck, yacht, sloop, dock, easel, landscape, boss |
Later and wider borrowings in the spelling guide · guess another word's family