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:
Red and fallow deer eat grasses, leaves and shoots of trees, as well as acorns, sweet chestnuts and horse chestnuts.
From BBC ● Aug. 18, 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
Each year, one field was allowed to lie fallow, and the other two would be planted with a crop different from the one planted there the year before.
From "Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices from a Medieval Village" by Laura Amy Schlitz
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
This is poetry that goes without help of rhyme; even its halts are big with invitations to the "upland fallows gray," and to the "pensive pleasures sweet."
From English Lands Letters and Kings Queen Anne and the Georges by Donald G. Mitchell
The weedy fallows winter-worn, Where cattle shiver under sodden hay.
From Song-Surf by Cale Young Rice
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 compared transpiration in fallowed fields to active fields across the Central Valley.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 25, 2024
After trying out a test plot a few years ago, Woolf went on to plant some 200,000 agave on land he otherwise would have fallowed.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 4, 2023
Stationing the men silently round about the house, fallowed by Israel, he announced his presence at the porch.
From Israel Potter by Herman Melville
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
“Water shortages, mandatory restrictions, land fallowing and job loss all impact our state and local economies.”
From Seattle Times ● May 16, 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
Plowing up the field, and summer fallowing, are the only remedies when the tar-weed gets too bad to endure.
From Two Years in Oregon by Wallis Nash
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.
