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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

trough.

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

6 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/tɹɒf/Received-Pronunciation/tɹɔf//tɹɑf/cot-caught-merger/tɹɑf/dialectal
  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.

  3. Any similarly shaped container. A rectangular container used for washing or rinsing clothes.

    Australia · New-Zealand
    Ernest threw his paint brushes into a kind of trough he had fashioned from sheet metal that he kept in the sink.
  4. 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.
  5. An undivided metal urinal (plumbing fixture)

    colloquial
  6. A gutter under the eaves of a building; an eaves trough.

    Canada
    The troughs were filled with leaves and needed clearing.
  7. 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.

    Australia · New-Zealand
  8. 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.
  9. A low turning point or a local minimum of a business cycle.

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

Where this word comes from

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.

verb/tɹɒf/Received-Pronunciation/tɹɔf//tɹɑf/cot-caught-merger/tɹɑf/dialectal
  1. To eat in a vulgar style, as if from a trough.

    He troughed his way through three meat pies.
Where this word comes from

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.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.