Plough

How to spell plough

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce plough

What does plough mean?

1. nounA large farming implement with one or more blades, used to cut and turn over soil before planting.

Plough in a sentence

• The farmer used an old plough.

• A horse-drawn plough stood in the museum.

Where does plough come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word comes from a Germanic root that surfaced in Old English as plōh, originally meaning not the tool itself but a measure of land: the amount one team of oxen could till in a day. The implement sense was reinforced by Old Norse plógr, brought to Britain by Norse settlers, since farming vocabulary mingled freely in the north and east of England. By the late Old English and early Middle English period the word had settled firmly on the farming tool that cuts and turns the soil. The British spelling keeps the old -ough cluster, once pronounced with a throaty back consonant that later fell silent, which is exactly why the modern word sounds like 'plow' yet is written with four unhelpful trailing letters. American English simplified it to 'plough', spelling it 'plow' to match the sound, while British writers preserved the historic form.

How the word is built

• plough (single root; from Old English plōh / Old Norse plógr, a tilling implement)

British and American spelling

Plough is the British spelling. American English spells it plow.