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Sow   /saʊ/  /soʊ/   Listen
verb
Sow  v. t.  (past sowed; past part. sown; pres. part. sowing)  
1.
To scatter, as seed, upon the earth; to plant by strewing; as, to sow wheat. Also used figuratively: To spread abroad; to propagate. "He would sow some difficulty." "A sower went forth to sow; and when he sowed, some seeds fell by the wayside." "And sow dissension in the hearts of brothers."
2.
To scatter seed upon, in, or over; to supply or stock, as land, with seeds. Also used figuratively: To scatter over; to besprinkle. "The intellectual faculty is a goodly field,... and it is the worst husbandry in the world to sow it with trifles." "(He) sowed with stars the heaven." "Now morn... sowed the earth with orient pearl."


Sow  v. i.  To sew. See Sew. (Obs.)


Sow  v. i.  (past sowed; past part. sown; pres. part. sowing)  To scatter seed for growth and the production of a crop; literally or figuratively. "They that sow in tears shall reap in joi."


noun
Sow  n.  
1.
(Zool.) The female of swine, or of the hog kind.
2.
(Zool.) A sow bug.
3.
(Metal.)
(a)
A channel or runner which receives the rows of molds in the pig bed.
(b)
The bar of metal which remains in such a runner.
(c)
A mass of solidified metal in a furnace hearth; a salamander.
4.
(Mil.) A kind of covered shed, formerly used by besiegers in filling up and passing the ditch of a besieged place, sapping and mining the wall, or the like.
Sow bread. (Bot.) See Cyclamen.
Sow bug, or Sowbug (Zool.), any one of numerous species of terrestrial Isopoda belonging to Oniscus, Porcellio, and allied genera of the family Oniscidae. They feed chiefly on decaying vegetable substances.
Sow thistle (Bot.), a composite plant (Sonchus oleraceus) said to be eaten by swine and some other animals.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Sow" Quotes from Famous Books



... catching the residuum of the process, or what we call thought,—the gaseous ashes of burned-out thinking,—the excretion of mental respiration,—that will depend on many things, as, on having a favorable intellectual temperature about one, and a fitting receptacle.—I sow more thought-seeds in twenty-four hours' travel over the desert-sand, along which my lonely consciousness paces day and night, than I shall throw into soil where it will germinate, in a year. All sorts of bodily and mental perturbations come between us and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... two volumes of this comprehensive publication are devoted to the living, the writers of the present who sow the seed from which shall grow the future of German letters. But who can speak of prophecy or prevision, at a moment when all who call themselves German are compelled to fight for their existence, and the future of German nationality as well as of German culture is hidden by the smoke of ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Mehetabel heard the grunts of the sow in the stye that adjoined the house, and imparted an undesirable flavor to the ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... all round our fields, and hedges to plant, and even trees. Then there was the whole irrigation system to see to, and the land to sow with grain and lucerne, after the soil had been duly ploughed and attended to. All this kept us young fellows very busy indeed, for we worked with the men almost constantly, not only as simple superintendents, but ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... action and sap circulation become weaker and weaker until they die from starvation. From Philadelphia southward gardeners expect that spring set plants will thus exhaust themselves and die by late summer, and they sow seed in late spring or early summer for plants on which they depend for late ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy


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