turf

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English turf, inherited from Old English turf (“sod, greensward”),^[2][3][4][5] inherited from Proto-Germanic *turbz.^[6][7][8] Its Germanic cognates are Old Frisian turf, Old Saxon turf, Dutch turf, Middle Low German torf, from which German Torf (“peat”) was taken, Old High German zurba and Old Norse torf.^{[5][4][9][10]} Outside Germanic it is compared with Sanskrit दर्भ (darbhá, “tuft of grass”),^{[5][4][7][11]} and Watkins, as Etymonline reports, takes both from an Indo-European root meaning to wind or compress.^[3] The Germanic word was borrowed into Romance as Old French tourbe (“peat”), Italian torba and Spanish turba, and into Medieval Latin as turba, the source of turbary.^[8][12][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

A slab of earth cut from the ground with the grass growing on it, a sod: Old English, in the Corpus Glossary,^[5][3] before 800 in Barnhart.^[4][13] The collective sense, the grass and its matted roots covering grassland, is also Old English, in the translation of Bede.^[5]

Semantic evolution

A block of peat dug for fuel is called turf from about 1300, in Havelok,^[5][7] and in Ireland and many English dialects the word still means peat.^[14][9] From the grass surface of the racecourse, the turf has meant horse racing and its world since 1755;^[5][3][15] Weekley compared the boards for the stage.^[16] In 19th-century slang the turf was the street as the haunt of prostitutes and tramps (1860).^[5][17] The modern sense of a territory claimed by someone began in American use with the streets held by a youth gang (1953) and spread to a criminal's or detective's patch (1962),^[5][15] giving turf war in the 1970s;^[15] figuratively it is anyone's sphere of activity or influence.^[18] The verb, to cover with turf, is recorded from about 1430,^[5][4] and the colloquial turf out, to throw someone out, from 1888, in Kipling.^[5][9]

Timeline

• Old English – a sod; the grassy surface of the ground.^[5]
• c1300 – a block of peat.^[5]
• c1430 – verb, to cover with turf.^[5]
• 1755 – the turf, horse racing.^[5][3]
• 1860 – (slang) the street as the haunt of prostitutes.^[5]
• 1888 – turf out, to throw out.^[5]
• 1953 – (US) a gang's territory.^[5]
• 1962 – an area of operation.^[5]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. The top layer of soil with the grass growing in it and the roots matted together; sod.
2. A piece of this cut from the ground: They laid fresh turves on the bare patch.
3. Peat, or a block of peat used as fuel.
4. The turf: horse racing as a sport or business; also a racecourse.
5. (informal) An area regarded by a person or group as their own territory or sphere of influence: The two agencies fought over turf.

Verb

1. To cover ground with turf.
2. (chiefly British, informal) To throw or force someone out, usually with out: They were turfed out of the flat.

Word family

• turfy
• turfless
• turflike
• lilyturf
• returf
• turfgrass
• turfman
• AstroTurf

Related words

• turbary
• sod
• peat
• surf and turf

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
3. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1999), 2nd ed., New York: Random House
7. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
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. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
11. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
12. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
13. ^ Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
14. ^ 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)
15. ^ a b c Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
16. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
17. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
18. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins