fallow1
/ˈfaləʊ
/adjective
1(Of farmland) ploughed and harrowed but left for a period without being sown in order to restore its fertility or to avoid surplus production: incentives for farmers to let land lie fallow...
- The Council of Agriculture has designated 2,000 hectares of fallow farmland for the growing of biomass crops including canola, soybeans and sunflowers next year, officials said yesterday.
- Starting in the 1930s the betterment schemes forced families into villages and turned their farmland to grazing or left it to lie fallow.
- Space between his mangos was let to lie fallow for most of the year, planting vegetables between them when the rains came.
Synonyms
uncultivated, unploughed, untilled, unplanted, unsown, unseeded, unused, undeveloped, dormant, resting, empty, bare, virgin;
neglected, untended, unmaintained, unmanaged
1.1(Of a period of time) characterized by inaction; unproductive: long fallow periods when nothing seems to happen...
- In case the Governor hasn't noticed, if history repeats, and it has so far, Australia's house prices are generally about 12 months into the 7 year price fallow period.
- Professional councillors should be elected at a reasonable salary and elections should be held every year for one-third of the councillors with a fallow year as is the system in many parts of the country already.
- The deal underscores a solid revival in the mergers and acquisitions market after the fallow years that followed the collapse of the technology boom.
Synonyms
inactive, dormant, quiet, slack, slow, slow-moving, flat, idle, inert, static, stagnant, depressed;
barren, unproductive, unfruitful
2(Of a sow) not pregnant.I would have a couple of fallow pigs for big celebrations, and a few chickens scratching around on the ground and roosting on my porch.
noun
A piece of fallow land: a great estate was usually divided between fallows, grazed stubble, and wheat [mass noun]: strips of summer fallow...
- Other field work includes spraying for weeds in wheat, disking wheat stubble for summer fallow, preparing seedbed for spring seeded crops like proso millet and planting irrigated corn.
- Much of his current research program focuses on strategies to reduce or eliminate the use of summer fallow in dryland crop rotations in the Nebraska Panhandle.
- Tilling and fertilizing summer fallow and finishing wheat harvest are the main field activities.
verb [with object]
Leave (land) fallow for a period: fallow the ground for a week or so after digging...
- If sufficient soil water is available the following spring, corn could be planted or if moisture is limited, the field could be fallowed and winter wheat could be planted in the fall.
- It was often planted on land that formerly had been fallowed.
- The FWS had prohibited ‘disking’ firebreaks and farming in designated rat habitat, and the Domenigonis had allowed rat habitat to grow by fallowing their fields.
Derivatives
fallowness
/ noun ...- Growing up on the farm in Iowa I learned a little bit about the importance of fallowness.
- The antidote to noise pollution comes with fallowness, allowing time for solitude and prayer.
Origin
Old English fealgian 'to break up land for sowing', of Germanic origin; related to Low German falgen.
Rhymes
fallow2
/ˈfaləʊ/noun [mass noun]
A pale brown or reddish yellow colour: [count noun]: possible feather colours include fallows, pieds, and yellows...
- Pure bischofite crystals are aquatic-transparent, but may also be of white, rose and fallow colour depending on impurities.
- Its wood, which is very heavy and of a fallow colour, has the grain and smell of ebony.
Origin
Old English falu, fealu, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch vaal and German fahl, falb.