plough
/plaʊ/ noun, verb, proper noun
Forms ploughs ploughing ploughed the Plough plow
- noun (agriculture) A device pulled through the ground in order to break it open into furrows for planting. “The horse-drawn plough had a tremendous impact on agriculture.”
- noun A joiner's plane for making grooves.
- noun A bookbinder's implement for trimming or shaving off the edges of books.
- noun The use of a plough; tillage.
- noun (yoga) A yoga pose resembling a traditional plough, halāsana.
- verb (transitive) To use a plough on soil to prepare for planting. “I've still got to plough that field.”
- verb (intransitive) To use a plough. “Some days I have to plough from sunrise to sunset.”
- verb To move with force. “Trucks ploughed through the water to ferry flood victims to safety.”
- verb (transitive, colloquial) To knock over or run over (someone) without stopping. “My brother ploughed me over.”
- verb To furrow; to make furrows, grooves, or ridges in.
- verb (nautical) To run through, as in sailing.
- verb (bookbinding) To trim, or shave off the edges of, as a book or paper, with a plough.
- verb (joinery) To cut a groove in, as in a plank, or the edge of a board; especially, a rectangular groove to receive the end of a shelf or tread, the edge of a panel, a tongue, etc.
- proper noun (astronomy, UK, common name) The brightest seven stars of the constellation Ursa Major. They are Alkaid, Mizar, Alioth, Megrez, Dubhe, Merak, and Phecda.
- proper noun A surname.
Synonyms
sull carucate chamfer groove rut flunk pluck spin get up in pound Formal terms bed coit coitize dight enjoy feague go in unto go to bed with have Big Dipper Dipper Charles's Wain Wain Wagon plow turn
Etymology
From Middle English plouh, plow, plugh(e), plough(e), plouw, from Old English plōh (“hide of land, ploughland”) and Old Norse plógr (“plough (the implement)”), both from Proto-Germanic *plōgaz, *plōguz (“plough”). Cognate with Scots pleuch, plou, North Frisian plog, West Frisian ploech, Low German Ploog, Dutch ploeg, Russian плуг (plug), German Pflug, Danish plov, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish plog, Icelandic plógur. Replaced Old English sulh (“plough, furrow”); see sullow.
From plough, a metonymic occupational surname for a plowwright or plowman.
Webster’s 1913
- noun See Plow.
- noun A well-known implement, drawn by horses, mules, oxen, or other power, for turning up the soil to prepare it for bearing crops; also used to furrow or break up the soil for other purposes; as, the subsoil plow; the draining plow.
- noun Fig.: Agriculture; husbandry. Johnson.
- verb To turn up, break up, or trench, with a plow; to till with, or as with, a plow; as, to plow the ground; to plow a field.
Etymology [OE. plouh, plou, AS. ploh; akin to D. ploeg, G. pflug, OHG. pfluog, pfluoh, Icel. plogr, Sw. plog, Dan. ploug, plov, Russ. plug', Lith. plugas.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “plough”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details