Sow

How to spell sow

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce sow

What does sow mean?

1. verbTo scatter or plant seed in soil so that it will grow.
2. nounAn adult female pig, especially one kept for breeding.

Sow in a sentence

• verb

  Farmers sow wheat in the autumn so it establishes before winter.

• noun

  The sow gave birth to a litter of twelve piglets overnight.

• verb

  You should sow the carrot seeds thinly along the row.

• noun

  The farmer moved the pregnant sow into a separate pen.

Where does sow come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This spelling actually covers two unrelated words that happen to look identical. The verb meaning 'to scatter seed' comes from Old English sawan, which meant exactly that, to plant by casting seed across the ground, and it goes back to a Germanic root shared with Latin serere 'to sow' and the source of the word 'seed' itself. The noun meaning 'a female pig' comes from a completely separate Old English word, sugu, which is related to 'swine' and to the Latin sus 'pig', an old imitation of the grunting sound a pig makes. Because the two words were spelled and pronounced differently in early English but drifted into the same written shape, modern English keeps one spelling for two senses that are said differently: the verb rhymes with 'go' and the pig rhymes with 'cow'. The verb is also a notorious homophone of 'sew' and 'so', which is the real spelling trap, since all three sound the same yet mean planting, stitching, and 'thus'.

How the word is built

• sow (single root; from Old English sawan 'to scatter seed', for the verb; from Old English sugu 'female pig', for the noun)

Words that sound like sow

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• sew: To join or repair fabric using a needle and thread, or with a sewing machine.
• so: To such a great extent or degree.