farrow
/ˈfæɹoʊ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.93 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To give birth to (a litter of piglets).
Example Sentences
- "Aha! I know you, gammer! Hamlet, revenge! The old sow that eats her farrow!"
- "At full speed he ran into a pigsty, where a sow was lying on her side with a farrow of eleven tugging at her."
- "She is the womb and the tomb: the sow that eats her farrow."
- "The members of a particular family refuse to eat pig, because they owe their existence to a sow, which farrowed babies and little pigs at the same birth."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *perḱ- Proto-Indo-European *-os Proto-Indo-European *pórḱos Proto-Germanic *farhaz Proto-West Germanic *farh Old English fearh Middle English *farow English farrow From Middle English *farow, *fargh (found only in the plural faren), from Old English fearh (“piglet”), from Proto-West Germanic *farh, from Proto-Germanic *farhaz, from Proto-Indo-European *pórḱos, from *perḱ- (“to dig”). See also Old High German farah, Middle Irish orc (“piglet”), Latin porcus, Proto-Slavic *porsę (“pig, piglet”), Lithuanian par̃šas, Avestan: 𐬞𐬆𐬭𐬆𐬯𐬀 (pər^əsa). Doublet of pork.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *farow, fearh, *farh, *farhaz, *pórḱos, farwen
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈfæɹoʊ/
- British English: /ˈfæɹəʊ/