Farrow
adj, name, noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A litter of piglets.
"Aha! I know you, gammer! Hamlet, revenge! The old sow that eats her farrow!"
- 2 the production of a litter of pigs wordnet
- 1 To give birth to (a litter of piglets).
- 2 give birth to (piglets) wordnet
- 1 Not pregnant; not producing young (not calving) in a given season or year; barren. not-comparable
- 1 A surname. countable, uncountable
- 2 A former community in Vulcan County, Alberta, Canada. countable, uncountable
Example
More examples"Other famous Rhodes Scholars include former President Bill Clinton, U.S. senator Cory Booker, American actor and songwriter Kris Kristofferson, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow."
Etymology
From Middle English *farow, *fargh (found only in the plural faren), from Old English fearh (“piglet”), from Proto-West Germanic *farh, from Proto-Germanic *farhaz, from Proto-Indo-European *pórḱos, from *perḱ- (“to dig”). See also Old High German farah, Middle Irish orc (“piglet”), Latin porcus, Proto-Slavic *porsę (“pig, piglet”), Lithuanian par̃šas, Avestan: 𐬞𐬆𐬭𐬆𐬯𐬀 (pər^əsa). Doublet of pork.
From Middle English farwen, from the noun.
Cognate with Old English fearr (“bull”).
Hypercorrected form of Farrar, where the original ending -ar was regarded as an error and consequently changed to -ow.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.