Word.ws English Dictionary

turf

UK/tɜːf/US/tɝf/

turf noun: a layer of earth covered with grass; sod.

Noun

turf (countable and uncountable, plural turfs or turves)

  1. (uncountable) A layer of earth covered with grass; sod.
    • Miss Thorn began digging up the turf with her lofter: it was a painful moment for me. ¶ “You might at least have tried me, Mrs. Cooke,” I said.1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter VIII, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC
    • It was a sixth successive defeat for Klopp in a major final and at the final whistle, with Karius burying his face into the turf, there was not exactly a stampede of team-mates wanting to console him.2018 May 26, Daniel Taylor, “Liverpool go through after Mohamed Salah stops Manchester City fightback”, in The Guardian (London)
  2. (countable) A piece of such a layer cut from the soil. May be used as sod to make a lawn, dried for peat, stacked to form earthen structures, etc.
    • "It's an old custom the people had when they bought and sold land. They used to cut out a clod and hand it over to the buyer, and you weren't lawfully seised of your land - it didn't really belong to you - till the other fellow had actually given you a piece of it - like this." He held out the...1906, Rudyard Kipling, Puck of Pook's Hill
    • Frodo and Sam went forward and saw that amidst the clamorous host were set three high-seats built of green turves.1955, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
  3. (countable) A block of peat used as fuel.
    • In ordinary peat-bogs, however, where turves are cut, there is always a large percentage of waste peat resulting from the digging, drying or transport of the turves, which can be utilized only by moulding it.1908, Karl Gayer and W. R. Fisher, edited by Sir William Schlich, Forest Utilization (Schlich's Manual of Forestry)
    • […] the fireman has to divide his time between getting up into the bunker to throw more turfs into the cab, and getting down on his hands and knees to get it into the firebox, and even then a reserve supply of turf must be carried on a truck behind the engine, and stops must be made on each steep...1945 January and February, “Notes and News: Locomotive Firing with Turf”, in Railway Magazine, page 46
  4. A thick, carpet-like bed of algae.
    • The turf layer is made up of filamentous and thallose red algae.1980, An Ecological Characterization of the Pacific Northwest Coastal Region, volumes 1-2, page 84
  5. (specifically, uncountable) A surface of synthetic fibers made to look like grass; artificial turf.
    • In climates where grass struggles to grow, turf is usually used instead on sports fields.
    • The Niners have nine games left on the schedule, and only one visit to a turf field. That turf in Seattle is not slit film; while the NFL admits slit film fields lead to more ankle sprains, the league insists that turf is otherwise no more dangerous than grass.2022 November 13, Dennis Young, “49ers continue fight against turf fields: 'Owners choose to save money'”, in SFGate, archived from the original on 12 Oct 2023
  6. (slang, uncountable) A territory claimed by a gang as their own.
  7. (broadly, uncountable) A person's domain or sphere of influence.
  8. (uncountable, with-definite-article) A racetrack, hippodrome.
  9. (uncountable, with-definite-article) The sport of racing horses.

Verb

turf (third-person singular simple present turfs, present participle turfing, simple past and past participle turfed)

  1. To cover with turf; to create a lawn by laying turfs.
  2. (Ultimate Frisbee) To throw a frisbee well short of its intended target, usually causing it to hit the ground within 10 yards of its release.
  3. To fire from a job or dismiss from a task.
    • Eight managers were turfed after the merger of the two companies.
  4. To cancel a project or product.
    • The company turfed the concept car because the prototype performed poorly.
  5. (informal, transitive) To expel, eject, or throw out; to turf out.
    • He has the mistaken idea that he is a lap dog, and loves to be nursed, especially by ladies, but eighty-five pounds on your lap is no joke, and he can never understand why he gets turfed off.1968, Eric Herne, The Haunted Islands, page 18
    • At the same time as College was being unceremoniously turfed from their premises, a similar process was affecting the Estcourt School.1988, Simon Haw with Richard Frame, For Hearth and Home: The Story of Maritzburg College, 1863-1988, page 166
  6. (transitive, medical slang) To transfer or attempt to transfer (a patient or case); to eschew or avoid responsibility for.
    • "Sure thing, I buffed her, and they turfed her to urology, but she bounced back to me!" […] They want to transfer responsibility for her to another branch of the hospital (turf her).1996, Jeffrey E. Nash, James M. Calonico, The Meaning of Social Interaction: An Introduction to Social Psychology, page 139

turf meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada

turf in Hindi

turf, sod
चकत्ता cakattā

turf in Tamil

புல் தரை, கழுப் பற்றை, குதிரைப் பந்தயம்

turf in Malayalam

പുൽമേട്, പന്തയമൈതാനം

turf in Kannada

ಹೆಪ್ಪು, ಹಸುರು ಹಾಸು, ಹುಲ್ಲುನೆಲ, ಹುಲ್ಲುಹೆಪ್ಪು, ಹುಲ್ಲುಗಾವಲು, ಹಸುರುಹಾಸು
More languagesFewer languages
turf in Vietnamese
địa bàn

Examples of turf in a sentence

  • The rival company's sales force is poaching on our turf.
  • Just the footfall will churn up the wet turf.
  • At the Buddhaed heart of a small turf maze she's offered a toke.

All 40 example sentences with turf

Forms of turf

Noun
pluralturfs
pluralturves
Verb
third-person singular presentturfs
present participleturfing
past participleturfed
pastturfed

Plural of turf: turfs or turves

Origin of turf

From Middle English turf, torf, from Old English turf (“turf, sod, soil, piece of grass-covered earth, greensward”), from Proto-West Germanic *turb (“turf, peat”), from Proto-Germanic *turbz (“turf, lawn”), from Proto-Indo-European *derbʰ- (“tuft, grass”). Cognates Cognate with Scots turr, truff (“turf, peat”), Dutch turf (“turf”), Middle Low German torf (“peat, turf”) (whence German Torf and German Low German Torf), Danish tørv (“peat”), Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish torv (“turf”), Norn *torv (“peat”), French tourbe (“peat”), Finnish turve (“turf”), Lithuanian darbas (“bunch of leaves”), durpės (“peat”), Sanskrit दर्भ (darbhá, “a type of grass”), दूर्वा (dū́rvā, “bent grass”). Not cognate with Danish torv (“square, market, marketplace”), which is instead inherited from Old Norse torg (“marketplace”), from Old East Slavic търгъ (tŭrgŭ, “trade, trading, commerce, trade square”), ultimately from Proto-Slavic *tъ̑rgъ (“merchandise, commodity, wares”).

Words formed from turf

Phrases with turf

7 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with turf

3 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about turf

What does turf mean?
Turf means a layer of earth covered with grass; sod.
What is turf in Hindi?
Turf in Hindi is चकत्ता (cakattā). See Turf meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is turf?
Turf can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce turf?
Turf is pronounced /tɝf/ (US).
What is the plural of turf?
The plural of turf is turfs.

Words near turf in the dictionary

  1. tureensful
  2. Turell
  3. Tureni
  4. Turenne
  5. Turennes
  6. turf
  7. turf accountant
  8. turf accountants
  9. turf advisor
  10. turf advisors
  11. turf ant

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: turf (page history and authors); चकत्ता (Hindi) (page history and authors); turf (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); turf (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); turf (Kannada Wiktionary) (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: En-au-turf.ogg.

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