farrow

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈfæɹəʊ/

• Audio (Southern England):

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• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈfæɹoʊ/, /ˈfɛɹoʊ/
• Rhymes: -æɹəʊ
• Hyphenation: farr‧ow

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.

farrow (plural farrows)

1. A litter of piglets.
   • 1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 15]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC:

     Aha! I know you, gammer! Hamlet, revenge! The old sow that eats her farrow!

   • 1927, Henry William Williamson, Tarka the Otter, Chapter 19:

     At full speed he ran into a pigsty, where a sow was lying on her side with a farrow of eleven tugging at her.

   • 1949, Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces:

     She is the womb and the tomb: the sow that eats her farrow.

From Middle English farwen, from the noun.

farrow (third-person singular simple present farrows, present participle farrowing, simple past and past participle farrowed)

1. To give birth to (a litter of piglets).

Cognate with Old English fearr (“bull”).

farrow (not comparable)

1. (of cows) Not pregnant; not producing young (not calving) in a given season or year; barren.