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PlainSpell

stow

/stoʊ/noun, verb

stow is spelled S-T-O-W: 4 letters and one syllable. It appears 1.1 times per million words in written English, the 26,776th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, stow means “A place, stead” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of stow is stows.

How many letters and syllables are in stow?

Letters4: S-T-O-W
Syllables1 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing1.1 times per million words; the 26,776th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searchednone measured in search
Pairs people search
Rhymes with
Same letters

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; 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); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How common is stow?

Stow appears 1.1 times per million words in written English, the 26,776th 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 stow?

  • UK /stəʊ/
  • US /stoʊ/
  • Australia /stəʉ/

Stow has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-I_learned_some_phrases-stow.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Words people confuse with stow

Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).

store vs stow0 B

Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

What rhymes with stow?

The 12 most written words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as stow from its last stressed vowel (/oʊ/):

Spelled with the same letters in another order: twos, swot, tows.

Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).

Forms of stow

  • stows plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • stowing participle, present
  • stowed participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does stow mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

    rareA place, stead.

verb

  1. 1

    To put something away in a compact and tidy manner, in its proper place, or in a suitable place.

  2. 2

    To store or pack something in a space-saving manner and over a long time.

  3. 3

    To arrange, pack, or fill something tightly or closely.

  4. 4

    To dispose of, lodge, or hide somebody somewhere.

  5. 5

    obsoleteslangTo cease; to stop doing something.

    But when I strove my flame to tell, / Says she, 'Come, stow that patter, / If you're a cove wot likes a gal, / Vy don't you stand some gatter?' / In course I instantly complied– / Two brimming quarts of porter, / With sev'ral goes of gin be

interjection

  1. 1

    obsoleteA cry used by falconers to call their birds back down to hand.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Stow in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchranger (to put something away in a compact and tidy…), stocker, garder, conserver (to put something away to store it in a…)
Germanverstauen (to put something away in a compact and tidy…)
Spanishestibar, arrumar, abarrotar (to put something away in a compact and tidy…), guardar, almacenar (to put something away to store it in a…)

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 stow come from?

From Middle English stowe, from Old English stōw (“place, location”), from Proto-West Germanic *stōu, from Proto-Germanic *stōō (“a place, stowage”), from Proto-Indo-European *steh₂- (“to stand, place, put”). Cognate with Old Frisian stō (“place”), Icelandic stó (“fireplace”), Dutch stouw (“place”), German Stau (“congestion”). See also -stow.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after stow