hallow
Americanverb (used with object)
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hallows,
present (3rd person singular)
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hallowed,
past participle, past
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hallowing
present participle
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to make holy; sanctify; consecrate.
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to honor as holy; consider sacred; venerate.
to hallow a battlefield.
verb
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to consecrate or set apart as being holy
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to venerate as being holy
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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hallowsimple
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hallowssimple
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have hallowedperfect
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has hallowedperfect
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am hallowingprogressive
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are hallowingprogressive
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is hallowingprogressive
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have been hallowingperfect progressive
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has been hallowingperfect progressive
Past
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hallowedsimple
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had hallowedperfect
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was hallowingprogressive
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were hallowingprogressive
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had been hallowingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of hallow
First recorded before 900; Middle English hal(o)wen, Old English hālgian (cognate with German heiligen, Old Norse helga ), derivative of hālig “consecrated, sacred, holy”; see holy
Explanation
To hallow is to bless, consecrate, or render holy by means of religious rites, especially significant religious places or the relics of saints. As a noun, hallow means "saint." The word for our popular holiday Halloween is a shortened form of "All Hallows' Eve," or "All Saints' Eve," which precedes All Saints' Day. In the verb form, the synonyms bless and sanctify are more commonly used these days, but hallow still appears in such phrases as "hallowed ground" (ground that's been blessed) and the Christian "hallowed be Thy name" (a phrase from "The Lord's Prayer," where hallowed means "revered").
Vocabulary lists containing hallow
The Grim Reader: Wicked Words of Grave Importance for Halloween
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Abraham Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" (1863)
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Othello
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
“No building will ever achieve the eloquence of this void in speaking of the event. We do not hallow this ground simply by filling it with buildings.”
From Washington Post ● Mar. 30, 2020
Happily for America, we rely on lessons of experience where we hallow and raise not men but ideas and virtues.
From Time ● Sep. 16, 2016
Jerry Chappell, 55, lives in a small hallow in the hills, an hour away from the Kingsport clinic where he gets his prescription.
From The Guardian ● May 9, 2016
Rarely does he wield it with power — instead, his soft hallow scrape is marked by flexibility and candor.
From New York Times ● Apr. 20, 2015
During passage through several thousand years it transformed into hail, hale, health, hallow, holy, whole, and heal, and all of these still move together through our minds.
From "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas
He came on a meadow between two streams where the flower called white hallows grew thick, and as these blossoms are rare and prized by healers, he came back again next day.
From "A Wizard of Earthsea" by Ursula K. Le Guin
It hallows at the baptismal font the introduction of the infant into the mystical oneness of the children of Christ.
From The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 by Various
Dr. Elisha Cullen Dick rests in the Friends burial ground in an unmarked grave, but his spirit hallows several houses in Alexandria.
From Seaport in Virginia George Washington's Alexandria by Moore, Gay Montague
He will say that the thing gratifies, fills, hallows, exalts his mind, but he will not be able to say why, or how.
From Modern Painters Volume I (of V) by Ruskin, John
Mercy among the virtues is like the moon among the stars,—not so sparkling and vivid as many, but dispensing a calm radiance that hallows the whole.
From Pearls of Thought by Ballou, Maturin Murray
But none of them match this show’s sense of place – not even the hallowed “Frasier.”
From Salon ● Jul. 1, 2026
Outside the Azteca Stadium on Friday for the opening match against South Africa, fans quoted a range of figures they'd paid for one of the hallowed tickets.
From BBC ● Jun. 16, 2026
On Thursday afternoon, in the steamy heat of the Mexican capital, this hallowed stadium became the first to host matches at three different World Cups.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 11, 2026
To adapt a hallowed and revered work of this scope, across decades and generations, brimming with magical realism, was, of course, daunting for the showrunners.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 29, 2026
Through her the field of grain was hallowed.
From "Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes" by Edith Hamilton
Now “Becoming” is the hallowing of her second coming: as an unprecedented, potentially billion-dollar American brand.
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 6, 2018
The Central Committee's hallowing of that 1976 ceremony was a subtle way for Teng to humiliate his old enemies.
From Time Magazine Archive
At St. Louis they drove across the prairie through flowering and fragrant shrubs, past orchards bending and breaking with loads of fruit, where boys rode by on calico ponies "hallowing & laughing."
From Time Magazine Archive
They praised its hallowing force with a most serious mien, as if they had not the faintest notion of what it meant.
From The Song of Songs by Sudermann, Hermann
And yet," said Oswald, "genuine love has a purifying, hallowing power, which scatters all doubts as the rays of the sun scatter fogs and mists.
From Problematic Characters A Novel by Spielhagen, Friedrich
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
