trough
/tɹɔf//tɹɒf/
trough noun: a long, narrow container, open on top, for feeding or watering animals.
Noun (1)
trough (plural troughs)
- A long, narrow container, open on top, for feeding or watering animals.
- One of Harriet's chores was to slop the pigs' trough each morning and evening.
- Any similarly shaped container.
- Now, covered concrete troughs to house the cables are laid parallel with the railway lines, cheapening maintenance because of improved accessibility for inspection and repair.1961 November, “Talking of Trains: The North Eastern's new rail-mounted piling unit”, in Trains Illustrated, page 646
- It just clips on the front of the stage without any special trough, has no great power and occupies only one dimmer, […]1976, Frederick Bentham, The art of stage lighting, page 233
- A rectangular container used for washing or rinsing clothes.
- Ernest threw his paint brushes into a kind of trough he had fashioned from sheet metal that he kept in the sink.
- A short, narrow canal designed to hold water until it drains or evaporates.
- There was a small trough that the sump pump emptied into; it was filled with mosquito larvae.
- An undivided metal urinal (plumbing fixture)
- A gutter under the eaves of a building; an eaves trough.
- The troughs were filled with leaves and needed clearing.
- A channel for conveying water or other farm liquids (such as milk) from place to place by gravity; any ‘U’ or ‘V’ cross-sectioned irrigation channel.
- A long, narrow depression between waves or ridges; the low portion of a wave cycle.
- The buoy bobbed between the crests and troughs of the waves moving across the bay.
- The neurologist pointed to a troubling trough in the pattern of his brain-waves.
- A low turning point or a local minimum of a business cycle.
- Antonyms:
- peak
- A linear atmospheric depression associated with a weather front.
Verb
trough (third-person singular simple present troughs, present participle troughing, simple past and past participle troughed)
- To eat in a vulgar style, as if from a trough.
- He troughed his way through three meat pies.
Noun (2) capitalized: Trough
Trough (plural Troughs)
- Alternative letter-case form of trough.
trough meaning in Gujarati, Tagalog, Arabic and Persian
trough in Gujarati
- a long, narrow, open container for feeding animals
- હવાડો havāḍo
trough in Tagalog
- a long, narrow depression between waves or ridges
- lambak
trough in Arabic
- a long, narrow, open container for feeding animals
- فِنْطَاس finṭās
trough in Persian
- a long, narrow, open container for feeding animals
- آبشخور âbešxôr
More languagesFewer languages
- trough in Vietnamese
- máng, máng ăn
Examples of trough in a sentence
- The hogs oinked happily in their pen as the farmer poured slop in their feeding trough.
- At that moment, lying in lukecool water in the wooden trough, I wanted nothing.
- She's a freako religious number, pushing Christians into any trough of water handy to rebaptize them.
Synonyms of trough
Antonyms
Forms of trough
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | troughs |
| plural | Troughs |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | troughs |
| present participle | troughing |
| past participle | troughed |
| past | troughed |
Origin of trough
PIE word *dóru From Middle English trogh, from Old English troh, trog (“a trough, tub, basin, vessel for containing liquids or other materials”), from Proto-West Germanic *trog, from Proto-Germanic *trugą, *trugaz, from Proto-Indo-European *drukós, enlargement of *dóru (“tree”). See also West Frisian trôch, Dutch trog, German Trog, Danish trug, Swedish tråg; also Middle Irish drochta (“wooden basin”), Old Armenian տարգալ (targal, “ladle, spoon”). More at tree.
Words formed from trough
- book trough
- eavestrough
- glacial trough
- Gunn-Peterson trough
- kneading trough
- Langmuir-Blodgett trough
- LB trough
- pentrough
- pneumatic trough
- slake trough
- Sylhet Trough
- trougher
- troughful
- trough lake
- troughless
- troughlike
- trough lolly
- trough-shell
- trough shell
- trough valley
- troughway
- troughwise
- troughy
- washtrough
- water trough
- wine trough
- winetrough
Phrases with trough
Words that rhyme with trough
Questions about trough
- What does trough mean?
- Trough means a long, narrow container, open on top, for feeding or watering animals.
- What is trough in Gujarati?
- Trough in Gujarati is હવાડો (havāḍo). See Trough meaning in Gujarati.
- What part of speech is trough?
- Trough can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce trough?
- Trough is pronounced /tɹɒf/ (UK).
- What is the plural of trough?
- The plural of trough is troughs.
Words near trough in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: trough (page history and authors); Trough (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-trough.wav, En-us-trough.ogg.
Cite this entry: “trough.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/trough. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.