Hoe

How to spell hoe

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce hoe

What does hoe mean?

1. nounA long-handled tool with a flat blade, used for weeding and breaking up soil.
2. verbTo break up soil or clear weeds using a flat-bladed tool.

Hoe in a sentence

• noun

  She leaned the hoe against the shed after weeding the vegetable bed.

• verb

  Every spring he likes to hoe the borders before planting seeds.

• noun

  A sharp hoe makes clearing weeds between the rows much easier.

• verb

  We need to hoe the allotment thoroughly to remove the stubborn weeds.

Where does hoe come from?

Language of origin: French

The word came into English in the 1300s from the Old French houe, which named a hand tool for breaking up soil. The French form itself was taken from a Frankish word, hauwa, belonging to the Germanic family and meaning roughly 'to chop' or 'to cut'. That same Germanic root lies behind the native English verb 'to hew', which still means to chop or strike, so a hoe is quite literally a chopping tool for the earth. The simple three-letter spelling, with its silent-looking final e, has stayed remarkably stable across the centuries. Because it sounds identical to the slang interjection 'ho', the gardening sense is best fixed in writing by keeping it firmly in a tool-and-soil context.

How the word is built

• hoe (single root, from Old French houe: a digging and weeding tool)