# trough

Pronunciation: US say "TRAWF" /tɹɔf/; UK say "TROF" /tɹɒf/

## Noun

1. A long, narrow container, open at the top, from which animals eat or drink.
   - Simple: A long, narrow container, open at the top, that holds food or water for animals.
   - _Every evening she scraped the kitchen leftovers into the pigs' trough._
   - _Horses crowded around the water trough after the long trail ride._
2. A long, narrow hollow between waves or ridges; more broadly, the low part of each cycle of a wave.
   - Simple: A long, narrow dip between waves or ridges, or the low part of any 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._
3. A low turning point in a business cycle, the local minimum reached before economic activity begins to rise again.
   - Simple: A low point in the ups and downs of business, where things stop getting worse.
   - _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._
4. Any container with the long, narrow, open-topped shape of an animal's feeding or watering trough.
   - Simple: Any long, narrow container that is open at the top.
   - _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._
5. A long, narrow zone of low atmospheric pressure associated with a weather front.
   - Simple: A long band of low air pressure that comes 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._
7. A metal urinal built as one undivided fixture instead of separate units. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: A metal urinal made in one piece, with no dividers between users.
   - _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._
8. A gutter fixed along the outside of a building just beneath the eaves of the roof. *(Canada)*
   - Simple: A gutter that runs along a building just under the edge 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._
9. A short, narrow channel built to hold water until it drains away or evaporates.
   - Simple: A short, narrow channel that holds water until it drains away or dries up.
   - _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._
10. 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. *(Australia, New Zealand)*
   - Simple: A farm channel that carries water, milk or other liquids downhill, or any U- or V-shaped channel for watering fields.
   - _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._
11. A rectangular container in which clothes are washed or rinsed. *(Australia, New Zealand)*
   - Simple: A rectangular tub for washing or rinsing clothes.
   - _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._

## Verb

6. To eat in a crude, ill-mannered way, as though feeding from a trough.
   - Simple: To eat in a rude, messy way, like an animal eating 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._

## Origin

From Middle English trogh, from Old English troh or trog ("a trough, tub, basin, vessel for containing liquids or other materials"), via Proto-West Germanic *trog and Proto-Germanic *trugą, *trugaz, from Proto-Indo-European *drukós, an enlargement of *dóru ("tree"). It is related to West Frisian trôch, Dutch trog, German Trog, Danish trug, and Swedish tråg, and also to Middle Irish drochta ("wooden basin") and Old Armenian targal ("ladle, spoon").

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/trough (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).