Word.ws English Dictionary

tough row to hoe

tough row to hoe is the alternative form of long row to hoe.

Meaning of long row to hoe

Noun

long row to hoe (plural long rows to hoe)

  1. (idiomatic) A difficult, arduous task or set of tasks; a lengthy, demanding project.
    • “Don’t you suppose I know all that you’ve been through. . . ? I’ve followed you every step. . . .”
      “Well, you’ve had a long row to hoe.”1907, William Dean Howells, chapter 5, in Between the Dark and the Daylight

Forms of tough row to hoe

pluraltough rows to hoe

Questions about tough row to hoe

What is tough row to hoe the alternative form of?
Tough row to hoe is the alternative form of long row to hoe.

Words near tough row to hoe in the dictionary

  1. tough on crime
  2. tough out
  3. tough pill to swallow
  4. tough pills to swallow
  5. tough road to hoe
  6. tough row to hoe
  7. tough rows to hoe
  8. tough sell
  9. tough sells
  10. tough shit
  11. tough sledding

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tough row to hoe (page history and authors); long row to hoe (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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Cite this entry: “tough row to hoe.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tough_row_to_hoe. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.