trough

Pluraltroughs

Formstroughs, troughing, troughed

1. 1
   for animalsnouncountable

   A long, narrow container, open at the top, from which animals eat or drink.

   Every evening she scraped the kitchen leftovers into the pigs' trough.

   Horses crowded around the water trough after the long trail ride.

   Note

   The farmyard vessel is the word's oldest home: Old English troh or trog already named it, along with a tub, a basin or any vessel for liquids or other materials. Further back lies an Indo-European root meaning "tree". In use it usually takes a word for what it holds or whom it feeds (a water trough, a feeding trough, the pigs' trough), and farmhands slop it with leftovers.

2. 2
   long hollownouncountable

   A long, narrow hollow between waves or ridges; more broadly, the low part of each cycle of a wave.

   The hull shuddered each time the boat slid off a crest and into the next trough.

   On the oscilloscope, each trough of the sound wave dipped well below the center line.

   Similarhollow

   Oppositecrest, peak

   Note

   Crest and trough are the standing pair for any wave: a buoy rides between the crests and troughs of the swell. The word works just as well on land, for the hollow between two ridges, and on any trace of a cycle, where it marks the lowest stretch. A neurologist can point to a troubling trough in a pattern of brain waves.

3. 3
   economic lownouncountable

   A low turning point in a business cycle, the local minimum reached before economic activity begins to rise again.

   Economists now think the recession hit its trough in the spring, when hiring finally began to pick up.

   The company's earnings fell by half from peak to trough before the recovery set in.

   Similarlow, bottom

   Oppositepeak

   Note

   Economists date a cycle by its turning points, and the trough is the low one, set against the peak. That makes it a moment, not a stretch of hard times: a recession hits its trough when activity stops falling. The slide from peak to trough is the contraction and the climb back is the expansion, which is why a fall is reported as a peak-to-trough decline.

4. 4
   long containernouncountable

   Any container with the long, narrow, open-topped shape of an animal's feeding or watering trough.

   Workers laid the signal cables in a lidded trough that runs alongside the track.

   At the party, bottles of soda sat on ice in a long metal trough.

   Note

   Here the shape does all the work, and the contents can be almost anything. Engineers lay covered concrete troughs beside railway lines to house cables, and stage lighting knows a special trough at the front of the stage: Frederick Bentham's The art of stage lighting describes a lamp that clips on without one. A word for the material or the job often goes in front, as in concrete trough or cable trough.

5. 5
   low pressurenouncountable

   A long, narrow zone of low atmospheric pressure associated with a weather front.

   Forecasters expect the trough along the cold front to set off thunderstorms by late afternoon.

   Once the trough passed, the wind swung around to the northwest and the sky cleared.

   Oppositeridge

   Note

   On a weather chart this trough stretches out as a line instead of closing into a ring. A low proper has isobars circling a center, but a trough is an elongated band of relatively low pressure, and fronts tend to lie along it. The same stretched shape in high pressure has its own name, a ridge.

6. 6
   eat greedilyverbintransitive

   To eat in a crude, ill-mannered way, as though feeding from a trough.

   We watched him trough his way through two plates of ribs without looking up once.

   By the time dessert arrived, the guests had troughed through most of the buffet.

   Similargobble, wolf, gorge

7. 7
   urinalnouncolloquialcountable

   A metal urinal built as one undivided fixture instead of separate units.

   Squeezed in at the trough between two strangers, he stared hard at the wall.

   The ballpark finally tore out its rusty troughs and put in individual urinals.

   Similarurinal

8. 8
   roof gutternounCanadacountable

   A gutter fixed along the outside of a building just beneath the eaves of the roof.

   Every fall the man next door pays a kid to clean the maple keys out of his troughs.

   Ice built up in the trough over the back porch until a section tore loose from the roof.

   Similargutter

   Note

   Some Canadian speakers clip eaves trough to plain trough, so the gutters along a roof's edge become the troughs. Context does the work: on a house the troughs are the gutters, in a barn they hold feed or water. Like gutters, a house's troughs are usually spoken of together, in the plural, and leaves are what clog them: the troughs were filled with leaves and needed clearing.

9. 9
   shallow channelnouncountable

   A short, narrow channel built to hold water until it drains away or evaporates.

   The downspout empties into a shallow trough at the edge of the lawn, where the water slowly sinks into the soil.

   The standing water in the trough beside the parking lot had evaporated by midafternoon, leaving a crust of mud.

   Similarditch, channel

10. 10
    farm channelnounAustraliaNew Zealandcountable

    A channel that carries water or another farm liquid, such as milk, from place to place by gravity; also, any irrigation channel with a U- or V-shaped cross-section.

    We lined the trough with concrete so the irrigation water would reach the bottom paddock instead of soaking into the clay.

    In the old cowshed, fresh milk ran along a galvanised trough to the cooling vat at the low end.

    Similarchannel, flume, ditch

    Note

    What sets this farm trough apart is motion. The stock's drinking trough and the standing-water trough keep liquid still, while this one carries it by gravity, so it must fall along its whole length. On Australian and New Zealand farms the name stretches to any irrigation channel with a U- or V-shaped section, and in a dairy the liquid it carries can be milk.

11. 11
    laundry tubnounAustraliaNew Zealandcountable

    A rectangular container in which clothes are washed or rinsed.

    She hand-washed her woollen jumper in the trough, then rinsed it twice in cold water.

    The old house still had a concrete trough in the laundry, next to the twin-tub washing machine.

    Similartub, sink

    Note

    In Australia and New Zealand the bare word can call up washday as readily as the farmyard. Readers elsewhere will picture the animals' feeding trough first, so when writing for them, make the laundry setting plain. Say what is being washed or rinsed, and the word will not send anyone out to the pigs.

Showing meanings only. Show all 11