Word.ws English Dictionary

sillion

Syllables: sil·li·onUK/ˈsɪlɪən/

sillion noun: the thick, voluminous, and shiny soil turned over by a plow.

Noun

sillion (uncountable)

  1. (rare) The thick, voluminous, and shiny soil turned over by a plow.
    • No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion / Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, / Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.1877 May 30, Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The Windhover: To Christ Our Lord”, in Robert Bridges, editor, Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins: Now First Published […], London: Humphrey Milford, published 1918...
    • The hard, plodding work of plowing (of the priest) makes the plowshare shine as it goes down the row turning up the sillion.1951, Hazelton Spencer, British Literature, Heath, page 827

Origin of sillion

Revived by Gerard Manley Hopkins in his 1877 (published posthumously in 1918) poem The Windhover; ultimately related to French sillon (“furrow”).

Questions about sillion

What does sillion mean?
Sillion means the thick, voluminous, and shiny soil turned over by a plow.
What part of speech is sillion?
Sillion is a noun.
How do you pronounce sillion?
Sillion is pronounced /ˈsɪlɪən/ (UK).

Words near sillion in the dictionary

  1. sillimanites
  2. sillimanitic
  3. Sillimans
  4. silliness
  5. sillinesses
  6. sillion
  7. Sillitoe
  8. Sillitoes
  9. Sillman
  10. Sillmans
  11. sillock

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sillion (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.

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