ROWEN

TileHead’s Word of the Day for 13 September 2011

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ROWEN  (n. pl. -S)

Definition(s):

1. (n.) a second growth of grass or crop of hay in a season

Useful information for game players:

• Front hooks: (none)
• Back hooks: -S
• Anagrams: OWNER, REWON
• Longer extensions: (none)
• Wraparounds: (none)
• Other Spellings: (none)
• Related Forms: (none)

Epilogue:
The word AFTERMATH also originally referred to a second growth of grass, from the Old English word math, “a mowing.”  But while AFTERMATH has gained a more common figurative meaning (“the consequences of an event”), ROWEN has retained its agrarian roots, as when Fredric Klees wrote “Before the first signs of frost the rowen, the tenderest hay of all, is cut and stowed away in the barn” (1950) or when Kate Barnes wrote “I think of how, at night, the deer lie down in the big field, of their beds in the rowen hay” (2004).  ROWEN sprouted from an Anglo-French word roughly meaning “to harvest again.”

This week’s theme: Words starting with the letter R

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