Word.ws English Dictionary

tallow

/ˈtæləʊ/US/ˈtæloʊ/

tallow noun: a hard animal fat obtained from suet, etc.; used in cooking as well as to make candles, soap and lubricants.

Noun

tallow (countable and uncountable, plural tallows)

  1. A hard animal fat obtained from suet, etc.; used in cooking as well as to make candles, soap and lubricants.
    • "I have got a very fine shirt, which I am going to use for my wedding shirt; but there are three tallow stains on it which I want washed out[.]"1886, Peter Christen Asbjø￵rnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 240
    • Nor were the wool prospects much better. The pastoral industry, which had weathered the severe depression of the early forties by recourse to boiling down the sheep for their tallow, and was now firmly re-established as the staple industry of the colony, was threatened once more with eclipse.1929, M. Barnard Eldershaw, A House Is Built, chapter VIII, section ii

Verb

tallow (third-person singular simple present tallows, present participle tallowing, simple past and past participle tallowed)

  1. To grease or smear with tallow.
  2. (transitive) To cause to have a large quantity of tallow; to fatten.
    • to tallow sheep
  3. (intransitive) Of animals: to develop quantities of tallow.
    • […] their beef is finer than that of the old short-horned breed, and they fatten much earlier and quicker, conveying still a vast depth of natural flesh, and tallowing within in the first degree.1824, R. W. Dickson, A Complete System of Improved Live Stock and Cattle, page 53

tallow meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Kannada

tallow in Tamil

கொழுப்பு, கொழுப்பு வகை, மாட்டுக் கொழுப்பு, மெழுகு

tallow in Urdu

چربی, چکنائی, شحم

tallow in Malayalam

മെഴുകുതിരി, മേദസ്സ്

tallow in Kannada

ಕೊಬ್ಬು
More languagesFewer languages
tallow in Punjabi
موم mom, ਮੋਮ mom
tallow in Persian
پیه

Forms of tallow

Noun
pluraltallows
Verb
third-person singular presenttallows
present participletallowing
past participletallowed
pasttallowed

Origin of tallow

From Middle English talow, talgh, from Old English *tealh, *tealg, (compare Old English tælg, telg (“dye”)), from Proto-West Germanic *talg, from Proto-Germanic *talgaz (compare Dutch talg, German Talg), from Proto-Indo-European *del- (“to flow”) (compare Middle Irish delt (“dew”), Old Armenian տեղ (teł, “heavy rain”)).

Words formed from tallow

Phrases with tallow

Words that rhyme with tallow

Questions about tallow

What does tallow mean?
Tallow means a hard animal fat obtained from suet, etc.; used in cooking as well as to make candles, soap and lubricants.
What is tallow in Tamil?
Tallow in Tamil is கொழுப்பு, கொழுப்பு வகை, மாட்டுக் கொழுப்பு. See Tallow meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is tallow?
Tallow can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce tallow?
Tallow is pronounced /ˈtæləʊ/ (UK).
What is the plural of tallow?
The plural of tallow is tallows.

Words near tallow in the dictionary

  1. Tallons
  2. tallophyte
  3. tallophytes
  4. tallot
  5. tallots
  6. tallow
  7. tallow gourd
  8. tallow gourds
  9. tallow tree
  10. tallow trees
  11. tallow wood

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tallow (page history and authors); tallow (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tallow (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tallow (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tallow (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); موم (Punjabi) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-tallow.wav.

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