meadow
mead·ow/ˈmɛd.əʊ̯/noun, verb
meadow is spelled M-E-A-D-O-W, 2 syllables: mead·ow. The wrong spelling people search most is medow: about 210 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 28 of all searches for the word. Meadow is a noun meaning “A field or pasture; a piece of land either intentionally cultivated with grass or (especially) naturally…”. The plural of meadow is meadows.
How many letters and syllables are in meadow?
| Letters | 6: M-E-A-D-O-W |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2: mead·ow |
| In writing | 4.0 times per million words; the 12,940th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, medow, about 210 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell meadow?
Meadow is spelled M-E-A-D-O-W. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 28 of the searches for meadow in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is meadow?
Meadow appears 4.0 times per million words in written English, the 12,940th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce meadow?
- UK /ˈmɛd.əʊ̯/
- UK [ˈmɛd.əʊ̯]
- UK [ˈmɛd.ɵ̞ʊ̯]
Meadow has 2 syllables, split mead·ow in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-meadow.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of meadow
- meadows plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- meadowing participle, present
- meadowed participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does meadow mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A field or pasture; a piece of land either intentionally cultivated with grass or (especially) naturally covered with grass, especially one that is intended to be mown for hay or to be grazed.
alpine meadows
- 2
Low land covered with coarse grass or rank herbage near rivers and in marshy places by the sea.
the salt meadows near Newark Bay
verb
- 1
To cultivate with grass in order to produce hay.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Meadow in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense field or pasture:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | pré, prairie |
| German | Wiese, Weide, Aue |
| Portuguese | prado |
| Spanish | prado, vega, zacatal, pastizal, yerbazal, hierbazal |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does meadow come from?
From Middle English medowe, medewe, medwe (also mede > Modern English mead), from Old English mǣdwe, inflected form of mǣd (see mead), from Proto-Germanic *mēdwō, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂met- (“to mow, reap”), enlargement of *h₂meh₁-. Related to mead (“meadow”) and to math (“mowed result or area”). More at mow.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).