trow

See also: Trow

English

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /tɹoʊ/
• (UK) IPA^(key): /tɹəʊ/
• Rhymes: -əʊ
• Homophone: throw (th-stopping)

Etymology 1

From Middle English trowen, trouwen, treuwen, treowen, trouen, from Old English trēowan, trīewan (“to trust”) and Old English trūwian (“to trust, confide”), from Proto-Germanic *trewwāną (“to trust”) and Proto-Germanic *trūwāną (“to trust”); both from Proto-Indo-European *drew- (“faithful, true”).

Akin to Scots trow, trew (“to believe, trust, confide in, prove”), Dutch trouwen (“to wed, marry”), German trauen (“to trust, marry”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål and Swedish tro (“to believe, think”), Norwegian Nynorsk tru (“to believe, think”), Icelandic trúa (“to trust, believe, believe in”).

Verb

trow (third-person singular simple present trows, present participle trowing, simple past and past participle trowed)

1. (archaic or dialectal) To trust or believe.
   • 1567, Arthur Golding: Ovid's Metamorphoses; Bk. 2 lines 527-9:

     ...Sure (he said) my wife shall never know

     Of this escape, and if she do, I know the worst I trow

     She can but chide, shall feare of chiding make me to forslow?

   • 1880, Richard Francis Burton, Os Lusíadas, volume I, page 23:

     "And as their valour, so you trow, defied
     on aspe'rous voyage cruel harm and sore,
     so many changing skies their manhood tried,
     such climes where storm-winds blow and billows roar[.]"

   • 1895, Kenneth Graham, The Golden Age, London, page 6:

     But was the matter allowed to end there? I trow not.

2. (archaic or dialectal) To have confidence in, or to give credence to.

Noun

trow (usually uncountable, plural trows)

1. (archaic or dialectal) Trust or faith.

Etymology 2

Noun

trow (countable and uncountable, plural trows)

1. (dated, nautical, countable) Any of several flat-bottomed sailing boats used for fishing or for carrying bulk goods.

Etymology 3

From Swedish or Norwegian troll. Doublet of troll, a later learned borrowing.

Noun

trow (plural trows)

1. (Orkney, Shetland, dated) A troll.
   • 1828, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, volume I, London: William Harrison Ainsworth, page 261:

     The Trows are of a diminutive stature, and they are usually dressed in gay green garments.

Etymology 4

Shortened form of trousers.

Noun

trow (uncountable)

1. (dated, uncountable) Used chiefly in the expression drop trow.

Anagrams

• ROTW, rowt, wort

Middle English

Etymology 1

Noun

trow

1. Alternative form of tre

Etymology 2

Noun

trow

1. Alternative form of trogh