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
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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:
The event was rested for a fallow year this summer but will return in June 2027, with tickets expected to go on sale in November.
From BBC ● Aug. 14, 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
In May, the powerful Imperial Irrigation District nixed Rucci’s plan to buy farmland, leave it fallow and use the allotted water from the Colorado River to cool the data center.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 19, 2026
“You’re going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.”
From "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck
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
The weedy fallows winter-worn, Where cattle shiver under sodden hay.
From Song-Surf by Cale Young Rice
The bare fallows of a factory are of short duration, and occur at lengthened intervals.
From The Hills and the Vale by Richard Jefferies
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
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
That creates systematic differences between fallowed and cultivated fields, which could skew Boser's analysis.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 25, 2024
That was possible because some habitat was nestled within fields or along the margins and farmers often fallowed some fields.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 25, 2023
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
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
But they have strongly opposed permanent fallowing of land, which they say would harm food production and local economies.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 27, 2025
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 theory has received support from the known fact, that most soils are benefitted by Summer fallowing.
From Farm drainage The Principles, Processes, and Effects of Draining Land with Stones, Wood, Plows, and Open Ditches, and Especially with Tiles by Henry F. (Henry Flagg) French
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.
