Word.ws English Dictionary

fogou

/ˈfuː.ɡuː/

fogou noun: a Cornish souterrain, an underground, dry-stone-walled chamber open on two ends.

fogou: a Cornish souterrain, an underground, dry-stone-walled chamber open on two ends
Image: N p holmes, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

fogou (plural fogous)

  1. A Cornish souterrain, an underground, dry-stone-walled chamber open on two ends.
    • Cornish fogous typically consist of a long passage with walls built up in horizontal courses of rough granite stones, typically some 40 to 50 feet long, 6 feet in height, and 5 to 6 feet in width, constructed in a deliberate curve.2005, Ross Heaven, Simon Buxton, Darkness Visible: Awakening Spiritual Light Through Darkness Meditation, page 8
    • All known fogous are associated with settlements, and their creation would have taken considerable effort, so they obviously had some function for these communities. The fogou at Carn Euny dates from the early part of the Iron Age; here it is thought that the large, stone-lined chamber, which is...2008, Sarah Chapman, David Chapman, Iconic Cornwall, page 18

Examples of fogou in a sentence

  • All known fogous are associated with settlements, and their creation would have taken considerable effort, so they obviously had some function for these communities.2008, Sarah Chapman, David Chapman, Iconic Cornwall, page 18:
  • Because as you are going to discover very shortly, what's under there is no Bronze Age chieftain, no medieval king, or whatever else you expect to find in a fogou like this.2010, Gary Russell, Doctor Who: The Glamour Chase, page 139:

Forms of fogou

pluralfogous
alternative formfougou

Origin of fogou

From Cornish fogo (“cave”); compare vug.

Questions about fogou

What does fogou mean?
Fogou means a Cornish souterrain, an underground, dry-stone-walled chamber open on two ends.
How do you use fogou in a sentence?
All known fogous are associated with settlements, and their creation would have taken considerable effort, so they obviously had some function for these communities.
What part of speech is fogou?
Fogou is a noun.
How do you pronounce fogou?
Fogou is pronounced /ˈfuː.ɡuː/.
What is the plural of fogou?
The plural of fogou is fogous.

Words near fogou in the dictionary

  1. fogman
  2. fogmen
  3. fogo
  4. Fogo Island
  5. fogos
  6. fogou
  7. fogous
  8. fogponic
  9. fogponics
  10. fogproof
  11. fogram

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fogou (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: “fogou.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fogou. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.