meadow

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meadow

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From Middle English medowe, medewe, medwe (also mede > Modern English mead), from Old English mǣdwe, inflected form of mǣd (see mead), from Proto-Germanic *mēdwō, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂met- (“to mow, reap”), enlargement of *h₂meh₁-.

See also West Frisian miede, dialectal Dutch made, dialectal German Matte (“mountain pasture”); also Welsh medi, Latin metere, Ancient Greek ἄμητος (ámētos, “reaping”). More at mow.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈmɛd.əʊ/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈmɛd.oʊ/,

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛdəʊ
• Hyphenation: mead‧ow

meadow (plural meadows)

1. A field or pasture; a piece of land covered or cultivated with grass, usually intended to be mown for hay.
   • 1879, R J, chapter 1, in The Amateur Poacher, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., , →OCLC:

     But then I had the flintlock by me for protection. ¶ […] The linen-press and a chest on the top of it formed, however, a very good gun-carriage; and, thus mounted, aim could be taken out of the window at the old mare feeding in the meadow below by the brook, […].

   • 1907 January, Harold Bindloss, chapter 1, in The Dust of Conflict, 1st Canadian edition, Toronto, Ont.: McLeod & Allen, →OCLC:

     […] belts of thin white mist streaked the brown plough land in the hollow where Appleby could see the pale shine of a winding river. Across that in turn, meadow and coppice rolled away past the white walls of a village bowered in orchards, […]

   • 1956, Delano Ames, chapter 7, in Crime out of Mind:

     Our part of the veranda did not hang over the gorge, but edged the meadow where half a dozen large and sleek horses had stopped grazing to join us.

2. Low land covered with coarse grass or rank herbage near rivers and in marshy places by the sea.

   the salt meadows near Newark Bay

   • 2013 January, Nancy Langston, “The Fraught History of a Watery World”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 1, page 59:

     European adventurers found themselves within a watery world, a tapestry of streams, channels, wetlands, lakes and lush riparian meadows enriched by floodwaters from the Mississippi River.

• lea/leigh

meadow (third-person singular simple present meadows, present participle meadowing, simple past and past participle meadowed)

1. To cultivate with grass in order to produce hay.
   • 1917, The English Reports: Exchequer, page 789:

     That there is and from time immemorial has been within that part of the parish called Mablethorpe St. Mary's a laudable custom that, if any outdweller take ancient pasture ground, he shall pay a modus of 4d. an acre, and so in proportion, on the 1st of August, in lieu of all manner of tithe; and that if any of the ancient pasture be once ploughed up or meadowed, it shall, when restored to pasture again, pay 4d. the acre in the hands of such outdweller.