Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A row, as of leaves or snow, heaped up by the wind.
  • noun A long row of cut hay or grain left to dry in a field before being bundled.
  • transitive verb To shape or arrange into a windrow.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Specifically To cut (sugarcane) before it is quite ripe and lay (it) in rows in the furrows. This is done to prevent the sap from running back into the roots or being otherwise spoiled by the action of frost.
  • To rake or put into the form of a windrow.
  • noun A row or line of hay raked together for the purpose of being rolled into cocks or heaps; also, sheaves of corn set up in a row one against another in order that the wind may blow between them.
  • noun A row of peats set up for drying; a row of pieces of turf, sod, or sward cut in paring and burning.
  • noun Any similar row or formation; an extended heap, as of dust thrown up by the wind.
  • noun The green border of a field, dug up in order to carry the earth to other land to mend it: so called because laid in rows and exposed to the wind.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A row or line of hay raked together for the purpose of being rolled into cocks or heaps.
  • noun engraving Sheaves of grain set up in a row, one against another, that the wind may blow between them.
  • noun engraving The green border of a field, dug up in order to carry the earth on other land to mend it.
  • transitive verb To arrange in lines or windrows, as hay when newly made.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A row of cut grain or hay allowed to dry in a field
  • noun A line of leaves etc heaped up by the wind
  • noun A similar streak of seaweed etc on the surface of the sea formed by Langmuir circulation
  • verb transitive To arrange (e.g. new-made hay) in lines or windrows.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Nothing could have saved them had it not been that, just at the most critical moment, they reached a "windrow," a strip of ground upon which a storm had hurled down the trunks of trees in wild confusion.

    Fun and Frolic Various

  • Once a proper site is located, and the permit is acquired, it is time to begin the compost pile ( "windrow").

    TheHorse.com News 2009

  • "windrow" of dead men in blue; some doubled up face downward, others with their white faces upturned to the sky, brave boys who had been shot to death in "holding the line."

    The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 Leander Stillwell 1888

  • "windrow" it's called - smack dab down the center of the road.

    The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal:Today's Headlines 2009

  • Then we go over the hay with this little tractor (my favorite) and an implement called a rake. (this photo doesn't show the rake) It goes down between two windrows that the swather makes and turns the hay over into the center, making a larger windrow.

    Making hay and a dog shirt... Gumbo Lily 2008

  • The curb cuts don't get cleared properly, the ploughs leave a three-foot high windrow covering the sidewalks...

    Many Seizures, a TIA, resting Elizabeth McClung 2008

  • Even though the windrow is left by the City, and it's like iron after it settles for more than a minute or two.

    Sunshine bye-bye; 52 postcards in one day! Elizabeth McClung 2008

  • Then we go over the hay with this little tractor (my favorite) and an implement called a rake. (this photo doesn't show the rake) It goes down between two windrows that the swather makes and turns the hay over into the center, making a larger windrow.

    Archive 2008-07-01 Gumbo Lily 2008

  • Sickly yellow leaves in a windrow with dried wings of box-elder seeds and snags of wool from the cotton - woods.

    Main Street 2004

  • Anyway, raked the lawn this afternoon, not the definitive and final raking of the year because there are still leaves up there in the tree waiting, but most of the stuff is down and raked into a windrow along the side fence.

    Rites of Autumn jhetley 2004

Comments

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  • Here we were living on the very windrow of existence, under conditions so poverty stricken and abject in the eyes of the world they were actually condemned in the newspapers, or by the Board of Health...

    - Malcolm Lowry, The Forest Path to the Spring

    July 13, 2008

  • ...the desolate shiftings of the windrowed snows of prairies...

    - Melville, Moby-Dick, ch. 42

    July 25, 2008

  • What a lovely word. :-)

    July 29, 2008