Word.ws English Dictionary

ballow

/ˈbæ.ləʊ/

ballow adjective: round; pot-bellied.

Adjective

ballow (comparative more ballow, superlative most ballow)

  1. (obsolete) Round; pot-bellied.
    • A horse of greater speed, nor yet a righter hound,
      Not any where twixt Kent and Calidon is found.
      Nor yet the levell South can shewe a smoother Race,
      Whereas the ballow Nag out-strips the winds in chase;1612, Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion, song 3 p. 40

Noun

ballow (plural ballows)

  1. Deep water inside a shoal or bar.

Proper noun capitalized: Ballow

Ballow (plural Ballows)

  1. A surname.

Forms of ballow

Adjective
comparativemore ballow
superlativemost ballow
Noun
pluralballows
Proper noun
pluralBallows

Origin of ballow

From Middle English balowe, balwe, balgh, from Old English bælg, bæliġ (“bag, purse, leathern bottle, pair of bellows, pod, husk”), from Proto-Germanic *balgiz (“bag”). Doublet of belly, bellows, and bulge.

Unknown.

Words that rhyme with ballow

Questions about ballow

What does ballow mean?
Ballow means round; pot-bellied.
What part of speech is ballow?
Ballow can be an adjective, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce ballow?
Ballow is pronounced /ˈbæ.ləʊ/.

Words near ballow in the dictionary

  1. Ballou
  2. Ballous
  3. ballout
  4. ballouts
  5. Ballouville
  6. ballow
  7. ballows
  8. ballpark
  9. ballpark estimate
  10. ballpark estimates
  11. ballpark estimation

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ballow (page history and authors); Ballow (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “ballow.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ballow. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.