hoe

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English howe, also houwe,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Old French houe,^{[5][6][7][2][8]} which is from Frankish *hauwā (“hoe”),^[6][4][9] a derivative of *hauwan (“to hew”), from Proto-Germanic *hawwaną (“to hew”),^[6][4] from Proto-Indo-European *kau- (“to hew, strike”).^[6][8] The Anglo-Norman word, meaning a hoe or a bill-hook, is recorded from the late 12th century.^[10] It is cognate with Old High German houwa (“hoe, mattock, pickaxe”), German Haue and Middle Dutch houwe (“mattock”),^[5][6][3][7] and is related to hew.^{[4][11][12][13]} The spelling hoe arose in the 18th century, when the endings “-ow” and “-oe” had come to sound alike, and became the usual form about 1755.^[5] The verb is from the noun,^[5][6][3] though Barnhart allows that it was perhaps sometimes borrowed from Middle French houer.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

A mattock or pickaxe: 1363, in a building account,^[2][7] then in 1375, in Barbour's Bruce, a tool used to loosen the soil and cut weeds.^[7] The OED's first record of the gardening tool is about 1430, in the Pilgrimage of the Life of Manhood.^[5]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English the word named a mattock or pickaxe used for digging and quarrying, as in Saracens mining a wall with pykoys & howes.^[2] The OED defines the tool as a thin iron blade fixed across the end of a long handle, used for loosening the surface of the ground and cutting up weeds.^[5] The verb meant first to work with a hoe (about 1430),^[5] and later to weed crops (1693) and to break up the ground with a hoe (1712).^[5] Johnson (1755) defined the noun as a tool for cutting up the earth whose blade is at right angles to the handle.^[14] In 1731 Jethro Tull wrote of various kinds of hoe,^[5] and the draw hoe was the original type.^[5][9] The American phrase a hard (or long) row to hoe, a difficult task, comes from the tedious work of hoeing,^[6][15] as does to hoe one's own row, to look after one's own affairs.^[6] The American hoecake (1745) was perhaps first baked on the blade of a hoe, and Barnhart suggests that hoedown (1841) began as the name of a dance imitating the steps of hoeing.^[7]

Timeline

• 1363 – houwe, a mattock or pickaxe.^[2][7]
• 1375 – a tool to loosen soil and cut weeds, in Barbour's Bruce.^[7] The OED's first record is about 1430.^[5]
• c. 1430 – verb, to work with a hoe.^[5]
• 1691 – verb with an adverb, to dig up or cut down with a hoe.^[5]
• 1693 – to weed or thin crops with a hoe.^[5]
• 1712 – to break up the ground with a hoe.^[5]
• c. 1755 – the spelling hoe becomes the usual one.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A garden or farm tool with a thin flat blade set across the end of a long handle, used for weeding and loosening the soil.^[13][3][5]
2. A machine or implement that does the same work, such as one drawn between rows of plants.^[3][5]

Verb

1. To work with a hoe: They spent the morning hoeing in the vegetable patch.^[3][5]
2. To weed, thin or cultivate crops or ground with a hoe; to remove weeds by hoeing.^[13][3][5]

Word family

• hoer
• hoelike
• backhoe
• hoecake
• hoedown
• unhoed
• Dutch hoe
• grub hoe

Related words

• hew
• hay
• hack

Usage notes

Several other words were spelled hoe.^[5][3] A hoe was a projecting ridge of land or promontory, from Old English hōh, now found only in place names such as Plymouth Hoe.^[5][3][9] In Orkney and Shetland the hoe is the spiny dogfish, a word borrowed from Old Norse hár (“dogfish, shark”).^[5][3] An obsolete hoe, care or anxiety, continues Old English hogu.^[5][9] American English used hoe from 1835 for dancing a hoedown,^[5] and Green's Dictionary of Slang lists hoe as a spelling of the slang ho.^[16]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
11. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
13. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
14. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
15. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
16. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com