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
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Down on the Farm
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100 SAT Words Beginning with "F"
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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:
“Over Elliott’s five-decade existence, fallow periods have existed, but these have historically been accompanied by market turbulence and followed by periods of rare opportunities,” the letter said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 2, 2026
Farmers will have to fallow their alfalfa fields, homeowners pull out their lawns, industries will have to reform.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 22, 2026
Onion and chili growers in New Mexico have let swaths of land lie fallow.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 21, 2026
Thousands of people joined the online queue at 09:00 BST in the hope of securing tickets to the festival at Worthy Farm in Somerset, which returns from 23 to 27 June after a fallow year.
From BBC ● Oct. 4, 2026
This would turn out to be true, but in the fallow days of late 1956 and early 1957, Livermore’s future looked bleak.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
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
I've kent fortune's smile even fa' on gude fallows; But I ne'er kent exception wi' Peter M'Craw!
From My Schools and Schoolmasters or The Story of my Education. by Hugh Miller
Turnips are now substituted in the place of these naked fallows; and now land in turnips is considered as fallow.
From The Works of Daniel Webster, Volume 1 by Daniel Webster
Estimates suggest up to 900,000 acres of farmland in the San Joaquin Valley alone might need to be fallowed to reduce the drawdown of groundwater and balance supply and demand.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 13, 2024
Crops that could be fallowed during dry spells, leaving more water for the environment, were supplanted by almond and pistachio orchards, which require water in wet years and dry.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 18, 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
Wells ran dry, farmers fallowed fields and cities restricted watering grass.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 6, 2023
If the soil has not been carefully fallowed before planting, it may be necessary to water the young trees slightly during the first two seasons.
From Dry-Farming : a System of Agriculture for Countries under a Low Rainfall by John Andreas Widtsoe
Options include “more efficient irrigation, less water-intensive crops and short-term fallowing of fields,” according to Michael Cohen, a senior fellow at the Pacific Institute.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 16, 2026
Experts with the Public Policy Institute of California have estimated that by 2040, the necessary pumping cutbacks could mean fallowing more than 900,000 acres of farmland.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 25, 2024
To be fair, the results from fallowing would affect only 5% of cultivated land, as opposed to 50% for crop changes and improved farming practices.
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
Summer fallowing is generally abandoned, except in cases where old pastures and meadows, new prairie, or bushy bad fields are to be subdued.
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