mow

From Middle English mowen (participle mowen), from Old English māwan (past tense mēow, past participle māwen), from Proto-Germanic *mēaną (compare Dutch maaien, German mähen, Danish meje, Swedish meja), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂meh₁- (“to mow, reap”); compare Hittite [script needed] (ḫamešḫa, “spring/early summer”, literally “mowing time”), Latin metō (“I harvest, mow”), Ancient Greek ἀμάω (amáō, “I mow”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /məʊ/
• (US) IPA^(key): /moʊ/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -əʊ

mow (third-person singular simple present mows, present participle mowing, simple past mowed, past participle mowed or mown)

1. (transitive) To cut down grass or crops.

   He mowed the lawn every few weeks in the summer.

2. (transitive) To cut down or slaughter in great numbers.
   • Captain Robert Palmer

     In the afternoon they attacked again, in close formation: our artillery mowed them, but they came on and on, […]

• mow down
• remow

Middle English mowe, from Middle French moue (“lip, pout”), borrowed from Old French moe (“grimace”), from Frankish *mauwa (“pout, protruding lip”), from Proto-Germanic *mawwō (“muff, sleeve”). Akin to Middle Dutch mouwe (“protruding lip”). Cognate to moue (“pout”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /məʊ/
• (US) IPA^(key): /moʊ/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -əʊ

mow (plural mows)

1. (now only dialectal) A scornful grimace; a wry face. [from 14th c.]
   • 1603, John Florio, transl.; Michel de Montaigne, The Essayes, […], printed at London: By Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], OCLC 946730821:

     , Folio Society, 2006, vol.1, p.212:

     Those that paint them dying […] delineate the prisoners spitting in their executioners faces, and making mowes at them.

   • Shakespeare

     Make mows at him.

mow (third-person singular simple present mows, present participle mowing, simple past and past participle mowed)

1. To make grimaces, mock.
   • 1610, The Tempest, by Shakespeare, act 2 scene 2

     For every trifle are they set upon me: / Sometime like apes that mow and chatter at me, / And after bite me;

   • Tyndale

     Nodding, becking, and mowing.

Old English mūga. Cognate with Norwegian muge (“heap, crowd, flock”).

• IPA^(key): /maʊ̯/
• Rhymes: -aʊ

mow (plural mows)

1. (now regional) A stack of hay, corn, beans or a barn for the storage of hay, corn, beans.
2. The place in a barn where hay or grain in the sheaf is stowed.

mow (third-person singular simple present mows, present participle mowing, simple past and past participle mowed)

1. (agriculture) To put into mows.

mow (plural mows)

1. Alternative form of mew (a seagull)

• Mow in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

• OMW, WMO

Feom Old English magan (“to use, to win, to be able to”).

mow

1. Alternative form of mowen (“to be able to”)

Feom Old English māwan (“to mow”).

mow

1. Alternative form of mowen (“to mow”)