knowe

Pluralknowes

1. 1
   noundialectalScotlandUlstercountable

   A small rounded hill or mound; a knoll.

   Sheep grazed on the knowe above the village all summer.

   From the top of the knowe you could see the whole valley.

   Similarknoll, hillock, mound, hummock

   Note

   A word of Scottish and Ulster landscapes, where a small rounded rise above a village or a field is called a knowe. Elsewhere, the everyday equivalent is knoll. It sits naturally in descriptions of places and in writing set in those regions, and its plural is simply knowes. It is a separate word from the old spelling of "know", which only happens to share its letters.

2. 2
   verbobsolete

   Obsolete spelling of know.

   Note

   Only the spelling changed here, not the meaning. The verb is know in every sense, from being certain of a fact to the old euphemism of knowing someone biblically. The final -e reflects Early Modern English spelling habits, which were dropped as spelling settled on the bare form. Use it only to quote or imitate older texts, because in modern prose it reads as a misspelling. It is unrelated to the Scots word for a small hill.

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