trough

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English trough, also trogh and trow,^[2][3][4] inherited from Old English trog, also troh,^{[5][6][7][8][4]} inherited from Proto-Germanic *trugą.^{[9][10][6][11]} Its cognates are Old Frisian trog, Old Saxon trog, Middle Dutch troch, Dutch trog, Old High German troc, German Trog, Old Norse trog, Swedish tråg and Danish trug.^{[5][6][11][9]} The Germanic noun comes from Proto-Indo-European *drukós, a derivative of *deru- (“to be firm; tree, wood”),^{[11][12][6][10]} so that a trough was originally something made of wood, perhaps a hollowed log;^{[11][13][3][10]} it is thus related to tree.^{[11][13][8][14]} Klein also relates Old High German truha (“trunk, chest”), now Truhe.^[4] The letters gh once stood for a guttural sound, as in loch; the sound later shifted to f, but the spelling stayed.^[3][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

A trough, tub or basin for liquids or other material: Barnhart dates the Old English word to about 700,^[3] and the OED's first quotation is from the Corpus Glossary.^[5] Bosworth–Toller cites an Old English medical text that says to lay hot stones in a trough and pour a little water on them.^[7] Etymonline gives the Old English senses as a flat, shallow wooden vessel, a tray, a hollow vessel and a canoe,^[6] and the OED records a small primitive boat from Old English as well.^[5]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English a trough was a feeding or watering trough for livestock and also a grain hopper in a mill;^[2] Chaucer used the word four times.^[15] From the 14th century it was also a channel or pipe for carrying water, from the 16th a natural hollow or valley, and since the 17th the hollow between two waves of the sea.^[12][16] From before 1513 it could mean a stone coffin, a sense now dialectal.^[5][16] Johnson (1755) defined it broadly as anything hollowed and open lengthwise on the upper side.^[17] Later specialized uses include the trough in which a grindstone runs (1725), the cells of a voltaic battery (1806), a small vessel in chemistry and photography (1813), and tanks for washing ore in mining (1877).^[5] Figurative uses began with a heavy drinker, a mere receptacle for liquor (before 1625),^[5][16] then eating (1840, in slang),^[18] a dining table or a meal (1901),^[5][16] and a ready source of money shared by unscrupulous people (1906, in Jack London).^[5] The verb, to feed greedily as at a trough, is recorded from 1748, in Richardson's Clarissa.^[5] The meteorological sense, an elongated area of low pressure, and the senses for the low point of a wave or cycle are in current dictionaries.^[19][8] English dialects had many forms of the word, among them trow, troff and thruff.^[20]

Timeline

• c. 700 – Old English trog, a trough, tub, basin.^[3][7]
• Old English – a small primitive boat (obsolete).^[5]
• before 1325 – Middle English trow.^[3]
• c. 1390 – the spellings trogh, trough.^[3]
• 14th century – a channel or pipe for water.^[12]
• before 1513 – a stone coffin.^[5]
• 16th century – a natural hollow, a valley.^[12]
• 17th century – the hollow between two waves.^[12]
• before 1625 – a heavy drinker.^[5]
• 1748 – verb, to feed as at a trough.^[5]
• 1806 – the cells of a voltaic battery.^[5]
• 1901 – a dining table, a meal.^[5]
• 1906 – a ready source of money for the unscrupulous.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A long, narrow open container for the water or feed of animals: The sheep crowded round the water trough.^[19][8][5]
2. A narrow channel, gutter or conduit for carrying water.^[19][16][12]
3. A long narrow hollow in the land or the ocean bed, or between two waves.^[19][16][12]
4. (meteorology) An elongated area of low atmospheric pressure.^[19]
5. A low point in a series or cycle; a depression.^[19]
6. (physics) The part of a wave in which the amplitude is below its average value.^[19]
7. (colloquial) A place where food is provided, or a meal; figuratively, a source of money that people help themselves to.^[5][16]

Verb

1. To make into a trough, or to treat in a trough.^[8][5]
2. To feed greedily, as at a trough.^[5]

Word family

• troughlike
• pneumatic trough

Related words

• tree
• trug
• tray

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b 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 Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
8. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ a b Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b c Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
11. ^ a b c d e Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
12. ^ a b c d e f g Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
13. ^ a b Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
14. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
16. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
17. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
18. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
19. ^ a b c d e f g Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
20. ^ 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)