Etymologically
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hoe

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Pronunciation

  • /həʊ/, /hoʊ/[1]

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

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