plough

American  

[plou] / plaʊ /

noun

Chiefly British.

1. plow.

---

plough ¹ British  

/ plaʊ /

noun

1. an agricultural implement with sharp blades, attached to a horse, tractor, etc, for cutting or turning over the earth

2. any of various similar implements, such as a device for clearing snow

3. a plane with a narrow blade for cutting grooves in wood

4. (in agriculture) ploughed land

5. to begin or undertake a task

---

verb

1. to till (the soil) with a plough

2. to make (furrows or grooves) in (something) with or as if with a plough

3. to move (through something) in the manner of a plough

   the ship ploughed the water

4. to work at slowly or perseveringly

5. (intr; foll by into or through) (of a vehicle) to run uncontrollably into something in its path

   the plane ploughed into the cottage roof

6. (tr; foll by in, up, under, etc) to turn over (a growing crop, manure, etc) into the earth with a plough

7. slang (intr) to fail an examination

Plough ² British  

/ plaʊ /

noun

1. Usual US name: the Big Dipper.  Also known as: Charles's Wain.  the group of the seven brightest stars in the constellation Ursa Major

---

Other Word Forms

• plougher noun
• unploughed adjective

Etymology

Origin of plough

Old English plōg plough land; related to Old Norse plogr, Old High German pfluoc

Example Sentences

Skinner and Farrell summed it up with a niggly fly-half battle, both ploughing into hits on each other after the ball was gone.

From BBC

With the bank ploughing retained capital into growing lending, Lead reckons the stock could be worth close to A$3.00 within five years.

From The Wall Street Journal

UK drug maker AstraZeneca has also announced it is pausing a planned £200m investment in a Cambridge research facility while ploughing tens of billions of dollars into the US.

From BBC

Foxconn has seen profits soar as it shifts focus from low-margin iPhone assembly to artificial intelligence servers that are now in huge demand as firms plough hundreds of billions of dollars into the technology.

From Barron's

The world's biggest tech companies are ploughing head-spinningly huge sums into building the hardware that powers artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT.

From Barron's