fallow
1 Americanadjective
-
(of land) plowed and left unseeded for a season or more; uncultivated.
-
not in use; inactive.
My creative energies have lain fallow this year.
noun
verb (used with object)
-
fallows,
present (3rd person singular)
-
fallowed,
past participle, past
-
fallowing
present participle
adjective
adjective
-
(of land) left unseeded after being ploughed and harrowed to regain fertility for a crop
-
(of an idea, state of mind, etc) undeveloped or inactive, but potentially useful
noun
verb
adjective
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
fallowsimple
-
fallowssimple
-
have fallowedperfect
-
has fallowedperfect
-
am fallowingprogressive
-
are fallowingprogressive
-
is fallowingprogressive
-
have been fallowingperfect progressive
-
has been fallowingperfect progressive
Past
-
fallowedsimple
-
had fallowedperfect
-
was fallowingprogressive
-
were fallowingprogressive
-
had been fallowingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of fallow1
1275–1325; Middle English falwe; compare Old English fealga, plural of *fealh, as gloss of Medieval Latin occas harrows
Origin of fallow2
before 1000; Middle English fal ( o ) we, Old English fealu; cognate with German falb
Explanation
Something that is fallow is left unused. If you’re smart but lazy, someone might say you have a fallow mind. We use the word to talk about any unused resource, it started as a work about land. Fallow comes from the old English word for plowing, and refers to the practice of leaving fields unplowed in rotation — when a field lies fallow, the soil regains nutrients that are sucked up by over-planting.
Vocabulary lists containing fallow
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
Looking to grow your vocabulary? Check out this interactive, curated word list from our team of English language specialists at Vocabulary.com – one of over 17,000 lists we've built to help learners worldwide!
Down on the Farm
Interested in learning more words like this one? Our team at Vocabulary.com has got you covered! You can review flashcards, quiz yourself, practice spelling, and more – and it's all completely free to use!
100 SAT Words Beginning with "F"
Want to remember this word for good? Start your learning journey today with our library of interactive, themed word lists built by the experts at Vocabulary.com – we'll help you make the most of your study time!
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:
After the communist government fell in 1991, his family was handed ownership of its chunk of peninsula farmland, which had since gone fallow.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 9, 2026
The Landover data center site was proposed by Lerner Enterprises, a D.C.-based real estate firm that’s operated by the family that owns the Washington Nationals and has rights to that fallow lot.
From Slate ● Aug. 6, 2026
As a result, fallow fields are in a "deplorable state, and at the slightest spark, the blaze spreads like wildfire" due to vegetation dried out by the heat.
From Barron's ● Jul. 25, 2026
With a huge surplus of commercial space sitting fallow in the area, the flexibility and creativity of club music might be a natural fit to repopulate the area with foot traffic and revelers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 8, 2026
It was James who sighted the circus ahead, set up on a fallow field.
From "Homecoming" by Cynthia Voigt
Swidden-fallow systems, he argues, maintain a mosaic of fields, fallows, and forests, that is heterogeneous and therefore resilient to climate change.
From National Geographic ● Mar. 8, 2016
Today Mr. Skov fallows a fifth of his fields, and canal water that once flowed from March to October arrives in June and vanishes as early as August.
From New York Times ● Apr. 12, 2015
Around 25% are using improved fallows with nitrogen-fixing trees, a scientific farming approach developed and introduced into Sauri by the World Agroforestry Center.
From Time Magazine Archive
But neither the hares on the fallows, the grouse on the moor, nor the pheasants on the bare branches brought us so much pleasure as the partridge.
From The Confessions of a Poacher by Anonymous
Even when the dodge was detected the fields and fallows had been pretty much stripped of the birds.
From The Confessions of a Poacher by Anonymous
The Department of Water Resources said the program has also helped in redirecting floodwaters onto fallowed farmland to recharge groundwater.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 24, 2025
Because the trees require watering in wet years or dry, their acreage can’t be fallowed during dry spells.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 16, 2024
So, she created a machine-learning model to conduct a weighted comparison between active and fallowed land, accounting for factors like location, topography and soil quality.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 25, 2024
“Ultimately what you end up with is potential for, honestly, a lot of fallowed land, and that same crop being imported into this country from other countries,” Covington said.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 17, 2024
A continued sheet of corn or fallowed fields occupy the whole plain.
From Before and after Waterloo Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802; 1814; 1816) by Edward Stanley
The results, published in Nature Communications, suggest that variation in efficiency due to farming practices could save as much water as switching crops or fallowing fields.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 25, 2024
These groups became convinced that this relic technology could curb hunger in the Andes by enabling back-to-back potato harvests with no need for fallowing.
From Salon ● Feb. 26, 2024
The federal money supporting the fallowing of farmland functions “like a painkiller,” said Newsha Ajami, chief development officer for research at the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 24, 2023
The Inflation Reduction Act includes $4 billion for the Western drought that includes payments to farmers who are willing to conserve Colorado River water by fallowing or making irrigation more efficient.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 3, 2023
In the years of experimenting, the fallowing system underwent a number of changes.
From Land of the Burnt Thigh by Stephen J. Voorhies
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.
