farrow
A litter of piglets.
Adjective
- Not pregnant; not producing young (not calving) in a given season or year; barren.
Origin
Cognate with Old English fearr (“bull”).
Noun
- A litter of piglets.
- Aha! I know you, gammer! Hamlet, revenge! The old sow that eats her farrow! - 1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 15]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC:
- At full speed he ran into a pigsty, where a sow was lying on her side with a farrow of eleven tugging at her. - 1927, Henry William Williamson, Tarka the Otter, Chapter 19:
- She is the womb and the tomb: the sow that eats her farrow. - 1949, Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces:
Origin
From Middle English *farow, *fargh (found only in the plural faren), from Old English fearh (“piglet”), from Proto-West Germanic *farh, from Proto-Germanic *farhaz, from Proto-Indo-European *pórḱos, from *perḱ- (“to dig”). See also Old High German farah, Middle Irish orc (“piglet”), Latin porcus, Proto-Slavic *porsę (“pig, piglet”), Lithuanian par̃šas, Avestan: 𐬞𐬆𐬭𐬆𐬯𐬀 (pər^əsa). Doublet of pork.
Forms
Verb
- To give birth to (a litter of piglets).
Origin
From Middle English farwen, from the noun.