trough

A long, narrow container, open on top, for feeding or watering animals.

Noun

  1. A long, narrow container, open on top, for feeding or watering animals.
    • One of Harriet's chores was to slop the pigs' trough each morning and evening.
  2. Any similarly shaped container.
    • Now, covered concrete troughs to house the cables are laid parallel with the railway lines, cheapening maintenance because of improved accessibility for inspection and repair. - 1961 November, “Talking of Trains: The...
    • It just clips on the front of the stage without any special trough, has no great power and occupies only one dimmer, […] - 1976, Frederick Bentham, The art of stage lighting, page 233:

    1. (Australia, New Zealand) A rectangular container used for washing or rinsing clothes.

      • Ernest threw his paint brushes into a kind of trough he had fashioned from sheet metal that he kept in the sink.
  3. A short, narrow canal designed to hold water until it drains or evaporates.
    • There was a small trough that the sump pump emptied into; it was filled with mosquito larvae.
  4. An undivided metal urinal (plumbing fixture)
  5. A gutter under the eaves of a building; an eaves trough.
    • The troughs were filled with leaves and needed clearing.
  6. A channel for conveying water or other farm liquids (such as milk) from place to place by gravity; any ‘U’ or ‘V’ cross-sectioned irrigation channel.
  7. A long, narrow depression between waves or ridges; the low portion of a wave cycle.
    • The buoy bobbed between the crests and troughs of the waves moving across the bay.
    • The neurologist pointed to a troubling trough in the pattern of his brain-waves.
  8. A low turning point or a local minimum of a business cycle.

    Antonyms: peak

  9. A linear atmospheric depression associated with a weather front.

Origin

PIE word *dóru From Middle English trogh, from Old English troh, trog (“a trough, tub, basin, vessel for containing liquids or other materials”), from Proto-West Germanic *trog, from Proto-Germanic *trugą, *trugaz, from Proto-Indo-European *drukós, enlargement of *dóru (“tree”). See also West Frisian trôch, Dutch trog, German Trog, Danish trug, Swedish tråg; also Middle Irish drochta (“wooden basin”), Old Armenian տարգալ (targal, “ladle, spoon”). More at tree.

Forms

troughs

Synonyms

manger

Derived

book trough eavestrough glacial trough Gunn-Peterson trough kneading trough Langmuir-Blodgett trough LB trough pentrough pneumatic trough slake trough Sylhet Trough trougher troughful trough lake troughless troughlike trough lolly trough-shell trough shell trough valley troughway troughwise troughy washtrough

Verb

  1. To eat in a vulgar style, as if from a trough.
    • He troughed his way through three meat pies.

Forms

troughs troughing troughed

Related

crib ditch trench