TOW

Pronunciation (US):

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does tow mean? 

• TOW (noun)
  The noun TOW has 1 sense:

1. the act of hauling something (as a vehicle) by means of a hitch or rope

  Familiarity information: TOW used as a noun is very rare.

• TOW (verb)
  The verb TOW has 1 sense:

1. drag behind

  Familiarity information: TOW used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TOW (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The act of hauling something (as a vehicle) by means of a hitch or rope

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

tow; towage

Context example:

the truck gave him a tow to the garage

Hypernyms ("tow" is a kind of...):

draw; haul; haulage (the act of drawing or hauling something)

Derivation:

tow (drag behind)

• TOW (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they tow    ... he / she / it tows   
Past simple: towed   
Past participle: towed   
-ing form: towing   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Drag behind

Classified under:

Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

Context example:

Horses used to tow barges along the canal

Hypernyms (to "tow" is one way to...):

pull along; schlep; shlep (pull along heavily, like a heavy load against a resistance)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "tow"):

tug (tow (a vessel) with a tug)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s somebody
Something ----s something

Derivation:

tow; towage (the act of hauling something (as a vehicle) by means of a hitch or rope)

tower (a powerful small boat designed to pull or push larger ships)

 Context examples 

I pulled in the oars and bent forward to the line which held the tow.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

“Hush! lad,” he whispered, “I count them not a fly. They may find they have more tow on their distaff than they know how to spin. Stand thou clear and give me space.”

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Across Marsh, Tagish, and Bennett (seventy miles of lakes), they flew so fast that the man whose turn it was to run towed behind the sled at the end of a rope.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

It was a sharp twenty minutes, but we beat her people down below, made the hatches fast on them, and towed her into Seaham.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He then commanded his men to row up to that side, and fastening a cable to one of the staples, ordered them to tow my chest, as they called it, toward the ship.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

I long to exert a fraction of Samson's strength, and break the entanglement like tow!

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Soon we passed out of the straits and doubled the south-east corner of the island, round which, four days ago, we had towed the HISPANIOLA.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

“I doen't know,” said Mr. Peggotty, “for sure, when her 'art begun to fail her; but all the way to England she had thowt to come to her dear home. Soon as she got to England she turned her face tow'rds it. But, fear of not being forgiv, fear of being pinted at, fear of some of us being dead along of her, fear of many things, turned her from it, kiender by force, upon the road: “Uncle, uncle,” she says to me, “the fear of not being worthy to do what my torn and bleeding breast so longed to do, was the most fright'ning fear of all! I turned back, when my 'art was full of prayers that I might crawl to the old door-step, in the night, kiss it, lay my wicked face upon it, and theer be found dead in the morning.”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

When the time comes I will describe that wondrous moonlit night upon the great lake when a young ichthyosaurus—a strange creature, half seal, half fish, to look at, with bone-covered eyes on each side of his snout, and a third eye fixed upon the top of his head—was entangled in an Indian net, and nearly upset our canoe before we towed it ashore; the same night that a green water-snake shot out from the rushes and carried off in its coils the steersman of Challenger's canoe.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It meant merely more work to find them and tow them back.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)