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Etymology and origin of the English word prow

English has two words spelled prow, with separate French sources: an archaic adjective meaning valiant, and the noun for the front of a ship.[1][2][3]

Pronunciation

  • /pɹaʊ/, /pɹoʊ/[4]

prow1 valiant

Confidence
Established
Formation
Borrowing
First attested
1340 Ayenbite
Borrowed from
Anglo-Norman prou via Middle English
Ultimate origin
Late Latin prōde

Etymology

The word for valiant is inherited from Middle English prou,[5][2] borrowed from Anglo-Norman prou,[6] also pru,[7][8] and prou,[6][1] variants of pro,[6][5] earlier prud and prod,[3] the adjective behind proud.[6][3][1] Klein traces it to Late Latin prōdis (“useful, advantageous”), from prōde, a back-formation from Latin prōdesse (“to be useful”), from prō (“before”),[2] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged also goes back to that form.[1] Modern French has it as preux.[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Good, worthy, brave: 1340, in the Ayenbite, which pairs prous with hardi.[6][5] Merriam-Webster Unabridged likewise dates it to the 14th century.[1]

Semantic evolution

The Anglo-Norman word, recorded from 1113–19, was a general term of praise for the ideal qualities of a person, frequently a knight,[8] and Middle English used it the same way, as of Hector in the Laud Troy Book: "hardy and prus".[5] Chaucer's Monk shows a shift to "proud, haughty", which the Middle English Dictionary lists as a separate sense.[5] The word appears in surnames before the first literary record (Robertum le Pro, 1256, and Robert Prowe, 1276), though the OED cannot tell whether these are Anglo-Norman or English.[6] It has long been archaic and literary, used especially in prowest knight after Spenser;[3][1] Johnson (1755) gave only "valiant", with Spenser as his authority.[9]

Timeline

  • 1340 – good, worthy; valiant, brave.[6][5]
  • c. 1400 – in the form preue, of noble knights, in Gawain.[5]
  • c. 1410 – of a king, proud, haughty, in Chaucer's Monk's Tale.[5]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. (archaic) Valiant, gallant; good and worthy: the prowest knight that ever field did fight (Spenser).[1][3][6][10][9]

prow2 front of a ship

Confidence
Probable
Formation
Borrowing
First attested
1555 R. Eden, translation of Peter Martyr
Borrowed from
Middle French proue
Ultimate origin
Ancient Greek πρῷρα

Etymology

The word for the front of a ship is apparently borrowed from Middle French proue,[6][11][12] recorded in French from about 1320 and, as proe, from 1246, in a shipping contract with the city of Genoa.[6] The French word is probably from the speech of Genoa: the OED gives Italian proa, of the 13th century,[6] and Barnhart, Etymonline, the American Heritage Dictionary and Merriam-Webster Unabridged give Italian prua.[11][12][13][1] Hoad and the Shorter Oxford add Provençal proa as a possible source.[14][3] It ultimately comes from Latin prōra,[6][11][12][15] which Barnhart, Etymonline and the American Heritage Dictionary take through Vulgar Latin *prōda, with dissimilation of r to d, retained as Italian proda (“shore, bank”).[11][12][13] The Latin word is from Ancient Greek πρῷρα (prôira, “bow of a ship”),[12][2][16] which Barnhart, Etymonline, Ayto and Klein relate to πρό (pró, “before, forward”),[11][12][15][2] from Proto-Indo-European *per- (“forward”);[12][13] Merriam-Webster Unabridged instead suggests a link with περᾶν (perân, “to pass through”).[1] Middle and early modern English also had prore, directly from Latin, in the same sense.[12][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The pointed front part of a ship; the bow: 1555, in R. Eden's translation of Peter Martyr.[6][11][12][1]

Semantic evolution

The OED now calls the word chiefly literary and non-technical, beside bow.[6] In the 16th and 17th centuries prow and poop meant the whole ship, and figuratively the whole of anything, from 1561 to 1632.[6][12] Warships gave a specialised use, the fore gun-deck and a discharge from its guns, from 1600 to 1704.[6][3] Any pointed part projecting in front could be called a prow from 1601, in Holland's Pliny,[6] and modern dictionaries extend it to the front of a ski, a racing skate or an aircraft.[13][1][10] Poets used it for a whole ship, from before 1771, in Gray.[6][10]

Timeline

  • 1555 – the pointed front part of a ship or boat.[6][11][1]
  • 1561 – prow and poop, the whole ship, or figuratively the whole of something (obsolete by 1632).[6]
  • 1600 – the fore gun-deck of a warship (obsolete by 1704).[6]
  • 1601 – a pointed part projecting in front.[6]
  • before 1771 – chiefly in poetry, a ship.[6]

Meanings

Noun

  1. The pointed front part of a ship or boat; the bow: Spray broke over the prow as the ferry left the harbour.[17][13][6]
  2. A projecting front part of something else, as of a ski or an aircraft.[13][1][10][6]
  3. (poetic) A ship.[6][10][3]
  4. (obsolete, 1600–1704) The fore gun-deck of a warship.[6][3]

Word family

  • prowed

Usage notes

A noun prow, advantage or profit, comes from the noun use of the same French word as the adjective.[6] It is recorded from about 1300,[6][5] Chaucer used it eight times,[18] and a verb formed from it, to be of advantage, appears before 1400.[6] For the ship, the pronunciation long varied: 17th-century poets rhymed the word both with foe and with now, and the rhyme with how prevailed only in the second half of the 19th century, the other being found as late as 1860.[6] In Cumberland, Lancashire and Cheshire dialect prow is also a form of prowl.[19]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  2. ^ a b c d e f Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  4. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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)
  6. ^ 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 z 27 28 29 30 31 32 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  7. ^ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  8. ^ a b Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
  9. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  10. ^ a b c d e The Chambers Dictionary (2014), 13th ed., Edinburgh: Chambers
  11. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  12. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  13. ^ a b c d e f The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  14. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  15. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
  16. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  17. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  18. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
  19. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Prow.” Etymologically, 6 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/en/prow. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

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