Tallow
noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A hard animal fat obtained from suet, etc.; used in cooking as well as to make candles, soap and lubricants. countable, uncountable
""I have got a very fine shirt, which I am going to use for my wedding shirt; but there are three tallow stains on it which I want washed out[.]""
- 2 obtained from suet and used in making soap, candles and lubricants wordnet
- 1 To grease or smear with tallow.
- 2 To cause to have a large quantity of tallow; to fatten. transitive
"to tallow sheep"
- 3 Of animals: to develop quantities of tallow. intransitive
"[…] their beef is finer than that of the old short-horned breed, and they fatten much earlier and quicker, conveying still a vast depth of natural flesh, and tallowing within in the first degree."
Example
More examples"My name is Martin—James Briggs Martin—but almost everybody calls me Tallow, because once when I was younger I saw old Uncle Ike Bond rubbing tallow on his boots to shine them, and then hurried home and fixed mine up with the stub of a candle and went to school."
Etymology
From Middle English talow, talgh, from Old English *tealh, *tealg, (compare Old English tælg, telg (“dye”)), from Proto-West Germanic *talg, from Proto-Germanic *talgaz (compare Dutch talg, German Talg), from Proto-Indo-European *del- (“to flow”) (compare Middle Irish delt (“dew”), Old Armenian տեղ (teł, “heavy rain”)).
Related phrases
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.