Word.ws English Dictionary

dow

/daʊ/

dow verb: to be worth. Also the alternative form of dhow.

Verb (1)

dow (third-person singular simple present dows, present participle dowing, simple past and past participle dowed or dought)

  1. (Northern England, dialectal, obsolete) To be worth.
  2. (Northern England, dialectal, obsolete) To thrive, prosper.

Verb (2)

dow (third-person singular simple present dows, present participle dowing, simple past and past participle dowed)

  1. To furnish with a dower; to endow.

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Dow

Dow (countable and uncountable, plural Dows)

  1. (countable) A male given name.
  2. (countable) A surname transferred from the given name.
  3. Dow Jones average
  4. An unincorporated community in Jersey County, Illinois, United States.
  5. An unincorporated community in Perry County, Kentucky, United States.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: DOW

DOW

  1. (US, abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of United States Department of War.
    Synonyms:
    USDOD, DOD

Noun capitalized: DOW

DOW (plural DOWs)

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of department of war.
    Synonyms:
    DOD, MOD, MOW

Proper noun (3) capitalized: DoW

DoW

  1. (alternative) Alternative form of DOW.

Also used as

dow is also the alternative form of dhow.

dow is also the obsolete form of dove.

dow is also the alternative form of dah.

dow is also the obsolete form of dough.

dow is also the initialism of day of the week.

Synonyms of dow

Forms of dow

Verb
third-person singular presentdows
present participledowing
past participledowed
pastdowed
past participledought
pastdought
Noun
pluraldows
pluralDOWs
Proper noun
pluralDows
alternative formDoW
alternative formD.O.W.
alternative formD. O. W.

Origin of dow

From Middle English douen, from Old English dugan, from Proto-West Germanic *dugan, from Proto-Germanic *duganą.

From Middle English dowen, from Old French douer, from Latin dōtō.

Variant of Daw from David or daw, and of Duff from Scottish Gaelic.

Words formed from dow

Phrases with dow

Words that rhyme with dow

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about dow

What does dow mean?
Dow means to be worth.
What part of speech is dow?
Dow can be a verb, a proper noun or a noun.
How do you pronounce dow?
Dow is pronounced /daʊ/.
What is the past tense of dow?
The past tense of dow is dowed.

Words near dow in the dictionary

  1. dovishly
  2. dovishness
  3. dovitinib
  4. Dovre
  5. Dovzhansk
  6. dow
  7. Dow Jones
  8. Dow process
  9. Dow theory
  10. dowable
  11. dowage

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dow (page history and authors); Dow (page history and authors); DOW (page history and authors); DoW (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-dow.wav.

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