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)
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:
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
With Glastonbury on a fallow year, Donington Park in Leicestershire is hosting the biggest festival in the UK this summer.
From BBC ● Jun. 14, 2026
The 2025-26 Broadway season was characterized by long fallow periods interrupted by an onslaught of eagerly awaited openings.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 5, 2026
It is probable, moreover, that the pollen content of the atmosphere is not related to roadside ragweed, but to the ragweed of city lots and fallow fields.
From "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
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
Not that Zephyr's work had been less important, for the hand that fallows ground performs as high a mission as the hand that sows the chosen seed.
From The Blue Goose by Nason, Frank Lewis
Population largely increases, waste lands are brought under the plough, grazing grounds for stock disappear, and the fallows, formerly so beneficial in restoring fertility to the soil, can no longer be kept free from cultivation.
From The Library Magazine of Select Foreign Literature All volumes by Various
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
That creates systematic differences between fallowed and cultivated fields, which could skew Boser's analysis.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 25, 2024
Wells ran dry, farmers fallowed fields, and cities restricted watering grass.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 20, 2023
Some surplus water will be poured across fallowed farm fields so it can soak into the ground and recharge sinking aquifers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 27, 2023
She fallowed me out of the room, and danced before me down the oak staircase, clearing the portion from the first landing at a bound.
From Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood by MacDonald, George
"We're probably going to have to fall back on fallowing at least a little bit," Boser said, "but hopefully not as much as we were originally expecting."
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
That plan calls for reducing use through a combination of efforts that range from paying farmers not to pump groundwater to leasing surface water, fallowing farmland and making infrastructure improvements.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 27, 2023
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
By getting as much summer fallowing as possible done on the second quarter-section.
From Ranching for Sylvia by Bindloss, Harold
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.
