Brow

How to spell brow

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce brow

What does brow mean?

1. nounThe forehead, or the ridge of hair above the eye.
2. nounThe projecting upper edge or summit of a hill or slope.

Brow in a sentence

• She wiped the sweat from her brow after the long run.

• The cottage stood right on the brow of the hill overlooking the valley.

• A deep frown creased his brow as he read the bill.

• From the brow of the ridge the walkers could see the whole coastline.

Where does brow come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Brow comes from the Old English brū, which meant the eyebrow or the eyelash, and it belongs to the native Germanic core of English rather than to any borrowed Latin or French layer. The same root surfaces across the Germanic and wider Indo-European family, appearing as brún in Old Norse and echoing Greek ophrys, all carrying the sense of the hairy ridge above the eye. Over time English stretched the meaning outward from the eyebrow itself to the whole forehead, so that one could knit the brow or mop a sweating brow. By extension writers also began to use it for the projecting upper edge of a hill or cliff, the place that sits like a forehead above the slope below. The spelling is short and old, and the trap for adults is purely the -ow ending, which sounds like 'cow' here but is spelled exactly like 'low', 'know', and 'show' where it sounds quite different.

How the word is built

• brow (from Old English brū: eyebrow); a single unanalysable root with no prefix or suffix