Mower

How to spell mower

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce mower

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mower mean?

1. nounA machine used to cut grass, especially a lawn.

Mower in a sentence

• The petrol mower would not start after sitting all winter.

• He pushed the mower across the back lawn before the rain came.

Where does mower come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is rooted firmly in the native Germanic stock of English, formed from the verb 'mow' plus the agent suffix '-er'. The verb descends from the Old English mawan, meaning 'to cut down grass or grain with a scythe', which in turn goes back to a Proto-Germanic root shared with Dutch maaien and German mahen, all carrying the same sense of cutting standing crops. The same ancient root gives us the noun 'meadow', literally a piece of land that is mowed, which is a useful memory hook for the spelling. The agent form 'mower' originally described a person wielding a scythe by hand, and only with the invention of the mechanical lawnmower in the 1830s did the word come to mean the machine itself. Because the word is built simply from 'mow' and '-er', the only real spelling trap is remembering the silent visual flow of o-w-e-r rather than any exotic letters.

How the word is built

• mow (Old English mawan: to cut grass or grain)
• -er (agent suffix: one who or that which does)