sown

1. 1
   plantedverb

   Past participle of sow.

   Once the seeds are sown, keep the soil damp until they sprout.

   The rumor had sown suspicion across the whole department.

   Note

   The participle is built like grown and known, sow plus -n, and it is the form that follows have or be: once the seeds are sown, the field was sown in April. The simple past is a different form, sowed. Beyond seed, it carries the figurative meaning, as when suspicion has been sown, and the scattering one, as in a meadow sown with poppies.

2. 2
   farmlandnoununcountable

   Especially in historical writing, cultivated land lived on by settled farmers, set against the steppe or desert of nomadic herders.

   The chronicle describes raids by steppe horsemen on the towns of the sown.

   Much of the region's history turns on the uneasy border between the desert and the sown.

   Note

   In historical writing the word comes with the and with a partner it is defined against: the desert and the sown, horsemen from the steppe raiding the towns of the sown. It is the participle turned into a noun for planted land, and it names a way of life, settled farming, as much as a kind of ground. As a mass noun it never takes a plural.

Showing meanings only. Show all 2