Word.ws English Dictionary

trow

UK/tɹəʊ/US/tɹoʊ/

trow verb: to trust or believe. Also the alternative form of drow.

Verb

trow (third-person singular simple present trows, present participle trowing, simple past and past participle trowed)

  1. (archaic, dialectal) To trust or believe.
    • ...Sure (he said) my wife shall never know
      Of this escape, and if she do, I know the worst I trow
      She can but chide, shall feare of chiding make me to forslow?1567, Arthur Golding: Ovid's Metamorphoses; Bk. 2 lines 527-9
    • Finding me stick to her still like wax, for my mettle was up as hers was, away she flew with me swifter than ever I went before, or since, I trow.1869, R[ichard] D[oddridge] Blackmore, chapter X, in Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Sampson Low, Son, & Marston, […], →OCLC
  2. (archaic, dialectal) To have confidence in, or to give credence to.

Noun (1)

trow (usually uncountable, plural trows)

  1. (archaic, dialectal, usually) Trust or faith.

Noun (2)

trow (countable and uncountable, plural trows)

  1. (countable, dated) Any of several flat-bottomed sailing boats used for fishing or for carrying bulk goods.

Noun (3)

IPA/tɹaʊ/

trow (uncountable)

  1. (dated) Used chiefly in the expression drop trow.

Proper noun capitalized: Trow

Trow (countable and uncountable, plural Trows)

  1. A surname from Middle English.
  2. A ghost town in Clark County, Wisconsin, United States.

Also used as

trow is also the alternative form of drow.

Forms of trow

Verb
third-person singular presenttrows
present participletrowing
past participletrowed
pasttrowed
Noun
pluraltrows
Proper noun
pluralTrows
alternative formTrew

Origin of trow

From Middle English trowen, trouwen, treuwen, treowen, trouen, from Old English trēowan, trīewan (“to trust”) and Old English trūwian (“to trust, confide”), from Proto-Germanic *trewwāną (“to trust”) and Proto-Germanic *trūwāną (“to trust”); both from Proto-Indo-European *drew- (“faithful, true”). Akin to Scots trow, trew (“to believe, trust, confide in, prove”), Dutch trouwen (“to wed, marry”), German trauen (“to trust, marry”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål and Swedish tro (“to believe, think”), Norwegian Nynorsk tru (“to believe, think”), Icelandic trúa (“to trust, believe, believe in”).

From Shetlandic and Orcadian Scots trow, from Norn *drou, *drau (compare 18th c. Norwegian drau, modern drov, drauv), from Old Norse draugr (“malevolent revenant”); along the variation drow, intermixed with Norn troll, from Old Norse trǫll (“troll, malevolent supernatural being”), a partial synonym to draugr. L-vocalisation occurred in the early 15th century in Middle Scots, so trolly, knolls probably became *trowie, knowes around this time.

Shortened form of trousers.

Words formed from trow

Phrases with trow

Words that rhyme with trow

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about trow

What does trow mean?
Trow means to trust or believe.
What part of speech is trow?
Trow can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce trow?
Trow is pronounced /tɹoʊ/ (US).
What is the past tense of trow?
The past tense of trow is trowed.

Words near trow in the dictionary

  1. Trovatos
  2. trove
  3. trover
  4. trovers
  5. troves
  6. trow
  7. trowable
  8. trowal
  9. trowals
  10. Trowbridge
  11. Trowbridges

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: trow (page history and authors); Trow (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: “trow.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/trow. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.