Mowing

How to spell mowing

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce mowing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mowing mean?

1. verbCutting down grass, grain, or weeds with a blade or machine.

Mowing in a sentence

• He spent Saturday morning mowing the back lawn.

• The council is responsible for mowing the grass verges along the road.

Where does mowing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The verb 'mow' descends from the Old English 'mawan', meaning 'to cut down grass or grain with a scythe', which traces back to a Proto-Germanic root shared with Dutch 'maaien' and German 'mähen'. The same ancient root gave us the noun 'meadow', literally a piece of land that is mown, and the older word 'math' meaning a cutting of grass, surviving today in 'aftermath' (the second cutting after the first harvest). When the verb takes the '-ing' ending to form the present participle and gerund, the silent 'w' is simply kept and the suffix added, giving 'mowing'. The spelling trap is mild but real: writers sometimes wonder whether the 'w' survives or whether an 'e' creeps in, yet the base 'mow' stays intact throughout. The word has described the steady labour of cutting fields and lawns in English for well over a thousand years.

How the word is built

• mow (Old English mawan: to cut grass)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)