fallow

1 of 4

adjective (1)

fal·​low ˈfa-(ˌ)lō 

: of a light yellowish-brown color

a fallow greyhound

fallow

2 of 4

noun

1

: usually cultivated land that is allowed to lie idle during the growing season

2

obsolete : plowed land

3

: the state or period of being fallow

Summer fallow is effective for destroying weeds.

4

: the tilling of land without sowing it for a season

fallow

3 of 4

verb

fallowed; fallowing; fallows

transitive verb

: to plow, harrow, and break up (land) without seeding to destroy weeds and conserve soil moisture

fallow

4 of 4

adjective (2)

1

: left untilled or unsown after plowing

2

: dormant, inactive

—used especially in the phrase to lie fallow

at this very moment there are probably important inventions lying fallow

—Harper's

fallowness noun

Synonyms

Adjective (2)

• dead
• dormant
• free
• idle
• inactive
• inert
• inoperative
• latent
• off
• unused
• vacant

Examples of fallow in a Sentence

Adjective (2)

the coal mine has been lying fallow since the drop in prices made it unprofitable

Recent Examples on the Web

Adjective

Glastonbury previously announced that 2026 will be a fallow year, meaning that a festival won’t be held, making demand for next summer’s event even higher. —Ellise Shafer, Variety, 26 Nov. 2024

But the festival will have a fallow year next year. —Peter White, Deadline, 18 Nov. 2024

Verb

Already, Reynolds has seen California officials incentivize farmers to fallow their land — that is, leave it unplanted to preserve water resources. —Manola Secaira, NPR, 9 Sep. 2024

Growers across the state, particularly in the Central Valley, reached a deal with the state to sharply restrict their water use and fallow their fields. —Coral Davenport, New York Times, 29 Dec. 2023

Word History

Etymology

Adjective (1)

Middle English falwe, falew, falow "sallow, dusky, faded, yellow tending toward red or brown (of a horse)," going back to Old English fealu "yellow tending toward red, brown or gray (though in some contexts less clear)," going back to Germanic *falwa- (whence also Old Saxon falu "pale, dun, yellowish," Old High German falo "yellowish, tending toward red, brown, or gold," Old Icelandic fǫlr "pale"), going back to dialectal Indo-European *pol-u̯o-, whence also Old Church Slavic plavŭ "golden (of a ripe field of grain)," Russian polóvyj, polovój "pale yellow" (of horses or dogs), Polish płowy "fair, flaxen," Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian plâv "blue, light-colored (of hair), blond," Lithuanian pal͂vas "pale, pale yellow," Latvian pal͂ss; perhaps from the same base, with varying ablaut and suffixation: Latin pall- in pallēre "to be pale or bloodless, have a pale color," pallidus "pale, colorless," pallor "paleness of complexion, loss of color" (< *palu̯o-?); Latin pullus "drab-colored, dingy, somber" (< *polu̯o- or *pl̥u̯o-?); Greek pellós "dark-colored, dusky" (< *peli̯ós?), peliós "discolored from a bruise, livid," poliós "pale gray (as of human hair), grizzled" (< *poliu̯os?; compared with Mycenaean po-ri-wa, but this may be a different word); Armenian alik' "gray hair, waves" (< *pl̥-i̯eh₂?); Old Irish líath "gray (of the hair, beard), gray-haired," Welsh llwyd "gray, pale, brown, turbid" (< *plei̯-to-?), Sanskrit paruṣá- "gray, gray-brown, dirty," palitá- "gray, gray-haired with age"

Note: The semantic range of Old English fealu has long been a point of discussion, as the word is applied to entities (as the waves of the sea, faded flowers and the feet of a phoenix), notably in poetry, that cannot be easily labeled with a single color name in Modern English. It has been claimed that this and some other Old English color words (as well as their Germanic cognates) may describe degrees of brightness more than hue; for a critical discussion of the earlier literature see C.P. Biggam, "The ambiguity of brightness (with special reference to Old English) and a new model for color description in semantics," Robert E. MacLaury et al., editors, Anthropology of Colors, Benjamins, 2007, pp. 171-88. The modern word fallow is now rare outside of the collocation fallow deer. — Outside of the coherent Germanic and Balto-Slavic set exemplified by fallow, the Indo-European comparative data offer a good deal of semantic and formal diversity. As A. Nussbaum has pointed out ("The 'Saussure Effect' in Latin and Italic," A. Lubotsky, editor, Sound Law and Analogy, Rodopi, 1997, pp. 190-91), the words outside of Latin betray an original i-stem *pel-ei̯- and have the meaning "gray, lacking brightness." The Latin set exemplified by pallidus has a problematic a; a reconstruction *palu̯o- would allow Latin to be grouped with Germanic and Balto-Slavic, but the source of such a form is unclear.

Noun

Middle English falwe, falow, falowe "arable land, tilled or untilled," going back to Old English fealh, felg "arable land," going back to West Germanic *falgō- or *falgjō- or *falgjōn- (whence also Old Frisian fallach, flach "arable land," Middle Dutch valge, Old High German felga), going back to dialectal Indo-European *polḱ-eh₂, whence also Gaulish olca (used by Gregory of Tours [Late Latin]) "arable land," Russian polosá "stripe, strip, zone" (Old Russian, "narrow strip of land"), Slovene plása "strip, strip of cultivated land," Polish płosa "strip of land, field"

Note: The Old English word is attested only as a gloss of the Latin word occa, and all occurrences of it appear to originate in a set of glosses to the tract De laude virginitatis, written by the seventh century Anglo-Saxon monk Aldhelm. Early on these glosses created scholarly confusion, as the usual meaning of the word occa in Medieval Latin was "harrow," which did not match the later history of the Old English word. A way out of this was shown by Johannes Hoops, who suggested that occa is more likely a variant of the Gaulish word olca "arable land" ("Felge und Falge: eine glossographische Untersuchungen zum Altertumskunde," Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, Band 27 [1912], pp. 313-24). The etymon *polḱ-eh₂ has been taken as a nominal derivative of a verb *pelḱ- "turn, bend" (hence Pokorny, Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch; Lloyd, Lühr et al., Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen), alluding to the turning over of the soil in plowing. The word would hence be related to the etymon of felly entry 1, alleged to derive from the same verb.

Verb

Middle English falwen "to till, let lie fallow," going back to Old English fealgian, derivative of fealh, felg "arable land" — more at fallow entry 1

Note: As suggested by the Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, the Middle English variants felyen, felowen and English dialect felly, would suggest the existence of a Class I weak verb *fielgan, which would seem to match Old High German felgen with the same sense.

Adjective (2)

Middle English falwe, falewe, adjective derivative of falwe fallow entry 2

First Known Use

Adjective (1)

before the 12th century, in the meaning defined above

Noun

before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 2

Verb

before the 12th century, in the meaning defined above

Adjective (2)

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Phrases Containing fallow

• fallow deer
• fallow period
• lying fallow

Kids Definition

fallow

1 of 3 noun

fal·​low ˈfal-ō 

1

: land for crops allowed to lie idle during the growing season

2

: the tilling of land without sowing it for a season

fallow

2 of 3 verb

: to till (land) without seeding

fallow

3 of 3 adjective

1

: left untilled or unsown

2

: dormant sense 1, inactive