lowing

Plurallowings

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The deep, drawn-out vocal sound made by cattle and similar animals.

   At dusk the lowing of the herd carried across the fields.

   A mournful lowing rose from the pasture as the calves were separated from their mothers.

   Similarmooing, bellowing

   Note

   A noun with a long life in Scripture and verse. The King James Bible of 1611 sets "the lowing of the oxen" beside the bleating of the sheep, and Milton has Osiris trample the grass "with lowings loud." It usually takes of and a herd noun, and loud is its natural companion. The plural lowings, which William Henry Hudson still uses in 1918, presents the sound as a series of separate calls.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of low.

   The herd kept lowing as the storm rolled in over the hills.

   Lowing steadily in the dark, the cattle pressed against the fence.

   Note

   The participle of the cattle verb, the one sung in the carol "Away in a Manger": "The cattle are lowing." It is intransitive, so it takes be in the progressive and needs no object. Do not confuse it with the obsolete transitive low, "to lower," or with the Scottish dialect low, "to blaze." In that dialect a fire, not a cow, would be lowing.

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