What does -land build?
-land keeps the meaning of "land" or "territory" and creates compounds naming regions with a precise geographical, cultural, or emotional identity:
Physical geography:
• highland = elevated land / mountainous region
• lowland = flat land at low altitude
• marshland = swampy, waterlogged land
• farmland = land used for agriculture
• woodland = land covered with trees
• grassland = open land covered with grass
Emotionally or politically charged concepts:
• homeland = the land that is one's home; native country
• wasteland = barren, desolate land; a place or period of spiritual or cultural emptiness
• heartland = the central, most characteristically representative part of a region
• motherland / fatherland = one's native country (with patriotic connotation)
Wasteland: the most literary compound
"Wasteland" has transcended its literal meaning (barren, uncultivated land) to become one of the most powerful concepts in English literature. T.S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land" (1922) established it as a metaphor for spiritual sterility, modern chaos, and loss of meaning.
Today "wasteland" is widely used metaphorically: "a cultural wasteland," "an urban wasteland" (a deteriorated area), "a moral wasteland."
It is one of those compounds that a cultured English speaker deploys to evoke desolation with precision and elegance.
Heartland: territory and identity
"Heartland" names the geographical and cultural core of a country, region, or movement. In North American politics, "the heartland" refers to the central states — away from the coasts — associated with agrarian and conservative values. More broadly, it is the zone that concentrates the essential identity of a group:
"The industrial heartland of England," "the heartland of jazz," "appeal to the heartland."
It carries strong rhetorical and political weight, as well as geographical and cultural precision.