Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Fallow   /fˈælˌoʊ/   Listen
Fallow

noun
1.
Cultivated land that is not seeded for one or more growing seasons.



Related search:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Fallow" Quotes from Famous Books



... France, that can exhibit such a prodigy. Yet even she, the mother of monsters, more prolific than the country of old called Ferax monstrorum, shows symptoms of being almost effete already; and she will be so, unless the fallow of a peace comes to recruit her fertility. But whatever may be represented concerning the meanness of the popular spirit, I, for one, do not think so desperately of the British nation. Our minds, as ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... him afore," he remarked, as he rejoined his companion. "Puir fallow! He's unco (uncouthly) worn. There'll no be muckle o' ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... in the summer, to a shallow, So narrow as to shame their wintry brink, Which threatens inundations deep and yellow! Such difference doth a few months make. You'd think Grief a rich field which never would lie fallow; No more it doth—its ploughs but change their boys, Who furrow some new soil to sow ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... the foul condition of the stubbles, disclosed when the corn was harvested shortly before I took possession at Michaelmas; they were overrun with couch grass—locally called "squitch"—and the following summer I had 40 acres of bare-fallow, repeatedly ploughed, harrowed, and cultivated throughout the whole season, which, of course, produced nothing by way of return. My predecessor had found that his arable land was approaching a condition in which it ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... feel that I am still in touch with civilisation. And really, if the worst come to the worst—but it's dangerous to joke about such things.' She touched lightly on the facts of her position. 'I'm afraid I have not been doing very much. Perhaps this is a fallow time with me; I may be gaining strength for great achievements. Unfortunately, I have a lazy companion. Miss Steinfeld (you know her from my last letter, if you got it) only pretends to work. I like her for her thorough goodness and her intelligence; but ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... one generation, the greater as a general rule the subsequent exhaustion until time has been allowed for recovery. Hence it oftens happens that the grandson of a successful man will be more successful than the son—the spirit that actuated the grandfather having lain fallow in the son and being refreshed by repose so as to be ready for fresh exertion in the grandson. A very successful man, moreover, has something of the hybrid in him; he is a new animal, arising from the coming ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... Swan, Goose, Bustard, Crane, Whopper, wild Geese, Brand Geese, Hearn, Shoveler, or Bittern, and many more; as also Venison, Red Deer, Fallow Deer, Legs of Mutton, Breasts of Veal boned and larded, Kid or Fawn, Pig, Pork, Neats-tongues, and Udders, or any Meat, a Turkey, Lard one pound, Pepper one ounce, Nutmegs, Ginger, Mace, Cloves, Wine a quart, Vinegar half a pint, a quart of great Oysters, Puddings, ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May

... Goddess yoked[78] two dragons to her chariot, and curbed their mouths with bridles; and was borne through the mid air of heaven and of earth, and guided her light chariot to the Tritonian citadel, to Triptolemus; and she ordered him to scatter the seeds that were entrusted {to him} partly in the fallow ground, {and} partly {in the ground} restored to cultivation after so long a time. Now had the youth been borne on high over Europe and the lands of Asia,[79] and he arrived at the coast of Scythia: Lyncus was the king there. He entered ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... dry, cold weather. The season was very backward. We were not able to sow anything in the fields before the first of May, and our wheat ought to have been ready to harvest in July. On the first of May, many of our wheat-fields, especially on clay land, looked as bare as a naked fallow. ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris

... her red riding-cloak and white beaver, I saw beside me. None of them had her seat in the saddle, and none of them her light hand on the reins. And tho' they lacked not fire and skill, they had not my lady's dash and daring to follow over field and fallow, stream and searing, and be in at the death with heightened colour, but never ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... swiftly ran, To chase the fallow deere: On Monday they began to hunt, Ere daylight ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... bestowed on him for nothing. Let us then laugh while we may, no matter how broad the laugh may be, and despite of what the poet says about "the loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind." The mind should occasionally be vacant, as the land should sometimes lie fallow, and for precisely ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston

... what a delight it would be! My whole theory of training is so different,—you should never waste your energies in house-work, my darling, (Johnnie had been dusting the parlor); it is sheer waste, with an intelligence like yours lying fallow and only waiting for the master's hand. Would you come, Johnnie, if Papa consented? Inches Mills is a quiet place, but lovely. There are a few bright minds in the neighborhood; we are near Boston, and not too far from Concord. Such a pretty room as you ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... in our dishes do we disregard,—what glorious gastronomic crops (if the Agent may be permitted the expression)—what glorious gastronomic crops do we sacrifice, allowing our goodly meats and fishes to lie fallow! 'Chance,' it is said by an ingenious historian, who, having been long a secretary in the East India House, must certainly have had access to the best information upon Eastern matters—'Chance,' it is said by Mr. Charles Lamb, 'which burnt down a Chinaman's ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... outspreading branches of the venerable oaks, with which the home park was studded, browsed the red and fallow deer, who, on the approach of any equestrian parties, or at the advance of some aristocratic vehicle bearing its freight of gay, laughing guests towards the hospitable mansion, would toss their antlered heads, or, startled, seek the cover of those green shady alleys leading ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest

... me, Plantagenet, these Oxford schools Are richly seated near the river-side: The mountains full of fat and fallow deer, The battling[10] pastures lade with kine and flocks, The town gorgeous with high built colleges, And scholars ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... Skinner! To be young and tall and strong and whirled in the cycle of vast events—to play a man's part in a glorious undertaking—to feel that I have enriched the world with my efforts, however humble, or with my body revitalized the soil made fallow by a ravishing monster. I feel, Skinner—I feel so much and can do ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... the time for ploughing is proclaimed to men, then make haste, you and your slaves alike, in wet and in dry, to plough in the season for ploughing, and bestir yourself early in the morning so that your fields may be full. Plough in the spring; but fallow broken up in the summer will not belie your hopes. Sow fallow land when the soil is still getting light: fallow land is a defender from harm ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... the dearest,—happiest period of our existence, the dawn of life's day—that enviable time when "we have no lessons;" when the colt presses, with his unshod foot, the fresh and verdant meadow, while he wonders at the team toiling under a noontide sun, over the parched and arid fallow in ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.

... asked, for instance, whether a clergyman or professor who has a period of leisure allotted to him in summer, in order that he may "recruit," as it is called, is not guilty of some sort of abuse of confidence, if, instead of amusing himself or lying fallow, he goes to a Summer School, and passes several weeks in discussions which, to be profitable either to himself or his hearers, must put some degree of strain ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... after suffering this "lion-hunting" ambition to lie fallow for many years, I at last reached a day when it seemed possible to realize it. The chance came in a curiously unexpected way. Mr. Akeley, a man famed in African hunting exploits, was to deliver a talk before a little club ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... led us, he said, to a joyous land, Joining the town and just at hand, Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew, And flowers put forth a fairer hue, And everything was strange and new; The sparrows were brighter than peacocks here, And their dogs outran our fallow deer, And honey-bees had lost their stings, And horses were born with eagles' wings: And just as I became assured My lame foot would be speedily cured, The music stopped and I stood still, And found myself outside the hill, Left alone against my will, To go ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... knowest, child. It was brought over to the Skelf-hill, and there it stands, a fearful warning to evil-doers, while, on the spot where it was boiled, within the circle of stones on the Nine-stane Rig, the ground lies bare and fallow, for the very grass refuses to grow where such a terrible ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... excellent agriculturists as tradesmen, and the rich soil of the valley is not allowed by the industrious peasants to lie fallow a ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant

... largest in Kent, finely wooded with well-placed beeches, many elms and some sweet chestnuts, abounding in little valleys and hollows of bracken, with springs and a stream and three fine ponds and multitudes of fallow deer. The house was built in the eighteenth century, it is of pale red brick in the style of a French chateau, and save for one pass among the crests which opens to blue distances, to minute, remote, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... now at hand after an unusually mild winter. With the breaking of the drouth of the summer before there had sprung up all through the encinal and sandy lands an immense crop of weeds, called by the natives margoso, fallow-weed. This plant had thriven all winter, and the cattle had forsaken the best mesquite grazing in the river bottoms to forage on it. The results showed that their instinct was true; for with very rare exceptions every beef on the ranch was fit for the butcher's ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams

... his own geniality into the Indian nature; and, had his missionary work effected nothing greater than this, his would have been no unworthy part. As the spiritual husbandman, he strove so to break up the fallow ground, that the harvest of souls ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie

... temptation is to do unworthy things we are demoralised. Most of us, happily, will not give ourselves over to the evil influence, but we lose faith in the ideal. We are apathetic. We have powers and let them lie fallow. Our minds should be restless for noble and beautiful things; they are hopeless in a land everywhere confined and wasted. In the destruction of spirit entailed lies the deeper significance of our ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney

... glee Nor yet for higher sympathy. To his side the fallow-deer Came and rested without fear; The eagle, lord of land and sea, Stooped down to pay ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales

... much help from Mr J. Romilly Allen and from Mr T.M. Fallow of Coatham, who very generously gave his aid in deciphering some of the ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... they who mold the men of story, These mothers, ofttimes shorn of grace and youth, Who, worn and weary, ask no greater glory Than making some young soul the home of truth, Who sow in hearts all fallow for the sowing The seeds of virtue and of scorn for sin, And, patient, watch the beauteous harvest growing And weed out tares which ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... up to all kinds of sin! Ha! that is a convent! that is an abbey! Over the doors, None of your death-heads carved in wood, None of your Saints looking pious and good, None of your Patriarchs old and shabby! But the heads and tusks of boars, And the cells Hung all round with the fells of the fallow-deer, And then what cheer! What jolly, fat friars, Sitting round the great, roaring fires, Roaring louder than they, With their strong wines, And their concubines, And never a bell, With its swagger and swell, Calling you up with a ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... took her usual walk around the enclosure. It was that season of the year when weary summer is lapsing into the arms of fallow autumn.—The day had been warm, and the light gales bore revigorating coolness on their wings as they tremulously agitated the foliage of the western forest, or fluttered among the branches of the trees surrounding the mansion. The green splendours of spring had begun to fade ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.

... two into a ripe haunch of Oxfordshire mutton, with certain "tiny kickshaws," I saw, for the first time, under the light of a glorious sunset, that exquisite velvety stretch of the park of Woodstock, dimpled with water, dotted with forest—clumps, where companies of sleek fallow-deer were grazing by the hundred, where pheasants whirred away down the aisles of wood, where memories of Fair Rosamond and of Rochester and of Alice Lee lingered,—and all brought to a ringing close by Southey's ballad of "Blenheim," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... After a single crop has been grown and gathered on land so cleared, the weeds grow up very thickly, and there is, of course, in the following year no possibility of repeating the dressing of wood ashes in the same way. Hence it is the universal practice to allow the land to lie fallow for at least two years, after a single crop has been raised, while crops are raised from other lands. During the fallow period the jungle grows up so rapidly and thickly that by the third year the weeds ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... twelve cradles; and for the following two months the main labor force was divided between threshing the wheat and plowing, hoeing, worming and suckering the tobacco, while the expert Daniel was day after day steadily topping the plants. In late August the plows began breaking the fallow fields for wheat. Early in September the cutting and housing of tobacco began, and continued at intervals in good weather until the middle of October. Then the corn was harvested and the sowing of wheat was the chief concern until the end of November when winter plowing was begun for the next ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... it? In God's name what was it that had made him this way, his being suddenly lifeless, like a cow that goes dry, or a field that is mysteriously, suddenly fallow.... And weariness seemed immortal.... What had led him into this dreadful cemetery of the mind? Had he gone too far in thought and emotion and come to a dreadful desert plane within himself ...? Had he eaten of the tree ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... discuss a question of agriculture, but scientific farmers know that there is a rotation of crops, [Footnote: The agricultural returns of the United Kingdom show that 50 and 1/2 per cent of the arable land was under pasture, 24 per cent under grain, 12 per cent under green crops and bare fallow, and 13 per cent under clover. The rotation would, therefore, be somewhat in this fashion: Nearly one fourth of the land in tillage is under a manured crop or fallow, one fourth under wheat, one fourth under clover, and one fourth under barley, oats, etc., the succession being, first year, ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher

... glance against a silver shield. Over banks and bents, across the headland's crown, As by pulse of gradual plumes through twilight wheeled, Soft as sleep, the waking wind awakes the weald. Moor and copse and fallow, near or far descried. Feel the mild wings move, and gladden where they glide: Silence, uttering love that all things understand, Bids the quiet fields forget that hard beside Wind is lord and change is ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... of Christ, though it sound on the surface, never goes in, and never gets hold. Think not that the saints are by nature of another kind: they were once what you are, and you may yet become what they are, and more. "Break up your fallow ground." Look into your own heart's sin until you begin to grieve over it; look unto Jesus bearing sin until you begin to love him for his love. Tell God frankly in prayer that your heart is hard, and plead for the Holy Spirit to make it tender. The saints already ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... results obtained in the same season from experiment plots on the farm of Mr. Carew, Deniliquin, in the same State. The seed was sown on well-worked fallow land in which a good amount of the previous year's rainfall had been conserved. The rainfall during the growing period was 322 points, distributed as follows:—May, 210; June, 60; July, 12; August, nil; September, 37; October, 3 points. Under ordinary conditions ...
— Wheat Growing in Australia • Australia Department of External Affairs

... as at present. Having no need of rearing animals for subsistence, no land would have been required for pasturage; and the earth not being cursed with sterility, there would have been no need of extensive tracts of country to permit of fallow land and the alternation of crops required in husbandry. The spontaneous and never-failing fruits of the garden would have been abundant for the simple wants of man. Still, that the human race might not be crowded, but might have ample space for recreation and enjoyment, and the charms of variety ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... to show for it save meadows abandoned to willow scrub, fallow fields deep in milk-weed, goldenrod, and asters; and here and there a charred rail or two of some gate or ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... ignorance of the most attractive and valuable material for praise and prayer contained in the Greek Church service-books. We have learning more than enough, and zeal enough for the pursuit of study in other departments, but this unworked field lies fallow, and no one thinks it worth his while to cultivate it. That the study will reward the student, although not in a material sense—for the meaningless prejudice of the great mass of our people for what is local and against the thought ...
— Hymns of the Greek Church - Translated with Introduction and Notes • John Brownlie

... law, and deals with sins of commission. The other, which we are now discussing, is the negative, and deals with sins of omission. It does not say anything about sowing but about not sowing. It takes up the case of souls which are lying fallow. It does not say, if we sow corruption we shall reap corruption. Perhaps we would not be so unwise, so regardless of ourselves, of public opinion, as to sow corruption. It does not say, if we sow tares ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... as well as the fallow-deer, and the roe, were formerly so abundant that, according to Lesley, from five hundred to a thousand were sometimes slain at a hunting-match; but the native races would already have been extinguished, had they not been carefully preserved ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various

... pity was taking the place of Ulyth's indignation. This was, indeed, fallow ground. Mrs. Arnold's comment flashed across ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil

... with a smile; "I do not let my brain lie fallow while I cultivate my fields. I make a point of reading over frequently the good old authors, seated comfortably by the fire with my feet on the fender, and I read also such new works as I am able to procure, from time to time, here ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... all out-doors, together with a nature that could not be called cruel, would make it fallow ground that the seed had fallen upon. ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone

... business on a very small margin of inspiration. Do you understand me? The man of genius is not a genius all the time. Usually he is only a very ordinary individual. There may be days or weeks that are fallow, and sometimes even years that are years of famine. He can not conquer the mood of depression that is holding him ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... hunting, so also with coursing and hawking; the Cotswolds were the grand centre of Elizabethan sport. Here it was that Shakespeare marked the falcon "waiting on and towering in her pride of place." Here he saw the fallow greyhounds ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... under the influence of his partner's urgings, had frequently and with due emphasis spoken to that year's crop of "one year's men" about the great musical talents of his wife, now, alas! lying fallow for want of a piano of her own, and he had coupled these remarks with plaints that the smallness of his resources prevented the purchase of such an instrument. These remarks, coming from one who had it virtually in his power to obtain for each one of the "one year's men" promotion ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg

... thought, and am indeed confirmed in my opinion, that we lose rather than gain by being educated at too early an age. Commence with one child at three years, and with another at seven years old, and in ten years, the one whose brain was left fallow even till seven years old, will be quite as far, if not further advanced, than the child whose intellect was prematurely forced at the earlier age; this is a fact which I have since seen proved in many instances, and it certainly was corroborated ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat

... many a curve my bank I fret By many a field and fallow, And many a fairy foreland set With willow-weed ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various

... Park at Hyfield were some fallow deer, imported from England, and seeming to thrive exceedingly well. There were also two emus, the sight of which reminded me of a very curious observation I had before made, and the truth of which again struck me forcibly, namely, that the face of the Emu bears a most remarkable likeness ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... great and high, well polished and of divers colours, were brought from this island, and they have many of these stones in the buildings of the great lords. This island is a place of the most field-pleasure of any in this country, being open and stored with red and fallow deer, with hares and conies, and with partridges, which are scarce in other parts; but here the game is preserved for the ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke

... ideal he was struggling, but he had not yet reached it, and the thought of his own reputation, his own feelings would creep in. He was not a selfishly ambitious man, but every one who is conscious of ability, every one who feels within him energies lying fallow for want of opportunity, must be ambitious for a larger sphere of work. Just as he was beginning to dare to allow himself the hope of some change in his work, some wider field, just as he was growing ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... Kant. Numerous essays on philosophy, chiefly on the Good, the Beautiful, and the Sublime, were published during this interval. But what is more important, Schiller's mind was enlarged, enriched, and invigorated; his poetical genius, by lying fallow for a time, gave promise of a richer harvest to come; his position in the world became more honorable, and his confidence in himself was strengthened by the confidence placed in him by all around him. A curious compliment was paid him by the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... with these excitements, and either die early or drop into a lean and mean old age at a time of life which they call a man's prime in Europe. When an acre of ground has produced long and well, we let it lie fallow and rest for a season; we take no man clear across the continent in the same coach he started in—the coach is stabled somewhere on the plains and its heated machinery allowed to cool for a few days; when a razor has ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... such an acre of potatoes will still produce six thousand weight of solid nourishment, three times the quantity produced by the acre of wheat. An acre of potatoes is cultivated with less expense than an acre of wheat; the fallow, which generally precedes the sowing of wheat, more than compensating the hoeing and other extraordinary culture which is always given to potatoes. Should this root ever become in any part of Europe, like rice in some rice countries, the common and favourite vegetable food of the people, so ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... Rab M'Graen, [chief harvester] A clever, sturdy fallow; His sin gat Eppie Sim wi' wean, [son, child] That liv'd in Achmacalla; He gat hemp-seed,[14] I mind it weel, An' he made unco light o't: [very] But mony a day was by himsel, [beside himself] He was sae sairly ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... this had chanticleer, the village clock, Bidden the goodwife for her maids to knock, And the swart ploughman for his breakfast stay'd, That he might till those lands were fallow laid; The hills and vailles here and there resound With the re-echoes of the deep-mouth'd hound; Each shepherd's daughter, with her cleanly peal,[138] Was come afield to milk the morning's meal. (I. ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... at Naseby—a daring cavalier, a valiant soldier; though now we see him en deshabille, and only as Prince Rupert, who, poor gentleman, has lost his pet dog! 'Lost,' says the advertisement—'lost on Friday last, about noon, a light fallow-colored greyhound, with a sore under her jaw, and a scar on her side; whoever shall give notice of her at Prince Rupert's apartments in Whitehall, shall be well rewarded for their pains.' The next month, we find the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various

... lord, I am too tired to kiss. Look how the earth is like an emerald, With rivers veined and flawed with fallow fields. ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale

... the earth and the sun measured. In the beginning she knew nothing—neither whether the earth was round or flat, nor what was the meaning of the stars, nor the name of one wild flower excepting daisies, nor of one great man. That fallow waste called her mind was virgin ground in truth, but Alick was patient, and labored hard at the stubborn soil; and when madame had given the credit to her own tact and those ugly little books from which she taught, it was to him really that Leam's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... next generation will inherit all that has gone before; and its elect, if they be themselves pure in heart, and individual, that is original, in mind, will, more or less thoroughly, embody the result, in subservience to some new development, essential in its turn to further progress. Even the fallow times, which we are so ready to call barren, must have their share in working the one needful work. They may be to the nation that which sickness so often is to the man—a time of refreshing from the Lord. A nation's life does not lie in its utterance any more than in the things which it possesses: ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... acres that might be richly fertile lie idle or are pasture for herds of wild bulls for the arena. The great land-owning families hold estates all over Spain; if in a given region the workers become too exigent, they decide to leave the land in fallow for a year or two. In the villages it becomes a question of starve or emigrate. To emigrate many certificates are needed. Many officials have to be placated. For all that money is needed. Men taking to the roads ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... We found by far the greatest part of the country cultivated, and planted with various sorts of productions; and most of these plantations were fenced round. Some spots, where plantations had been formerly, now produced nothing, lying fallow; and there were places that had never been touched, but lay in a state of nature, and yet even these were useful, in affording them timber, as they were generally covered with trees. We met with several ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... buck and doe. They were the first of these animals we had yet seen, and that was considered strange, as we had passed through a deer country. They were of the species common to all parts of the United States' territory—the "red" or "fallow" deer (Cervus Virginianus). It may be here remarked that the common deer of the United States, sometimes called "red deer," is the fallow deer of English parks, that the "elk" of America is the red deer of Europe, ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... suspected of a design to dictate), by their examples and suggestions therefore, they led them to industry, and shewed it to be necessary to all stations, as the basis of almost every virtue. An idle mind, like fallow ground, is the soil for every weed to grow in; in it vice strengthens, the seed of every vanity flourishes unmolested and luxuriant; discontent, malignity, ill humour, spread far and wide, and the mind becomes a chaos which it is beyond ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott

... "Those well-drained fallow fields, ten years ago, were poor clay pastures, fetlock deep in mire six months in the year, and accursed in the eyes of my poor dear old friend, Squire Lavington; because they were so full of old moles'-nests, that they threw all ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... wrapped myself in my cloak, and remained on deck, in order to see the scenery between Vienna and Presburg, which, no doubt, appears lovely enough when nature is clad in the garment of spring; but now I only saw leafless trees and fallow ground—a dreary picture ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer

... died broken-hearted. After that the laird never rallied. The breezy irony of the dalesfolk did not spare the old man's bent head. "He's brankan" (holding up his head) "like a steg swan," they would say as he went past. The shaft was left unworked, and the holding lay fallow. Laird Fisher took wage from the lord of the manor to burn charcoal in ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... are compact and vertical; but, in the reindeer, the joints of the tarsal bones admit of lateral expansion, and the broad hoofs curve upwards in front, while the two secondary ones behind (which are but slightly developed in the fallow deer and others of the same family) are prolonged till, in certain positions, they are capable of being applied to the ground, thus adding to the circumference and sustaining power of the foot. It has been usually suggested ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... soil, and have found it to be clay. In this ground there appears to be a singular strength and capacity for bearing crops, for a farmer here told me that he had raised fine wheat on one and the same piece of land eleven years successively without ever breaking it up or letting it lie fallow. The butter here is clean and yellow as in Holland. Through this land runs an excellent river, about 500 or 600 paces wide. This river comes out of the Mahakas Country, about four leagues north of us. There ...
— Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664 • Various

... weather those of invasion and civil war, to which they were so much accustomed by land; and, in the course of a year or two, no traces were found of ravages that one might have supposed it would have taken ages to recover from. The lands remained the same, and their fertility was improved by the fallow; every man carried away with him the implements of his trade, and brought them back with him when he returned; and the industry of every village supplied every necessary article that the community required for their food, clothing, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... is now widely distributed as a wild animal over New Zealand, where also the fallow-deer (C. dama) and the Indian sambar (C. aristotelis or unicolor) have been introduced locally. The sambar, or one or other of its subspecies, has also been naturalized in Mauritius, and in the Marianne Islands in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... very little in harmony with Anaxagoras's wisdom; if, indeed, it be true that he, by a kind of divine impulse and greatness of spirit, voluntarily quitted his house, and left his land to lie fallow and to be grazed by sheep like a common. But the life of a contemplative philosopher and that of an active statesman are, I presume, not the same thing; for the one merely employs, upon great and good objects of thought, an intelligence that requires no aid of ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... were bears, deer, foxes, and wolves. The bear-skins were in great numbers, few of them very large, but, in general, of a shining black colour. The deer-skins were scarcer, and they seem to belong to that sort called the fallow-deer by the historians of Carolina, though Mr Pennant thinks it quite a different species from, ours, and distinguishes it by the name of Virginian deer.[1] The foxes are in great plenty, and of several varieties, some of their skins being quite yellow, with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... vast field, belonging to one estate, it was in reality the property of many different peasants, as well as of some proprietors. Each peasant had marked his plot with a cipher furrow when he plowed, and the outlines had been preserved by the growing grain. The rich black soil of the fallow land, and strips of turf separating sections, relieved the monotony of ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... by the beginning of 1604, though some further time elapsed, as it seems, before the author had courage to go to print. His genius had lain fallow for twenty years. He was now old, and had written nothing, or at least published nothing, since Galatea. What fame was left to him he had earned as a poet among many poets. As an author, if he was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... let the spot where he fell lie fallow for many years, and carefully preserved a tree under which he had been sitting just before. Strange that the people who had suffered so much at his hands should regard his memory ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various

... dull green, first to pepper and salt, then to freckled white, then all over to the spotless white eider-down quilt of the winter returned, as far as the eye—even his binocular orbs—could reach, muffling tree and house, and garden and copse, and farm and field, and fallow and plow and meadow in the one mystical, silent, white disguise of winter. And the thrush ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... picked thirty or forty years before. What made it harder to endure suggestion of this sort was that in his feeling of always breaking new ground there was an inner sense, or fear, or doubt, that perhaps it was not really virgin soil he was turning up, but merely the sod of fields which had lain fallow a year or two or had possibly been ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... three-fourths of the people would starve. Fertilization of the land was rare. All that was usually done in this direction was to burn the stubble in the spring before the land went under the plough. Rotation of crops was practically unknown. A portion of each farm was allowed to lie fallow once in a while, but as these fallow fields were rarely ploughed and weeds might grow without restraint, the rest from cultivation was of little value. Even the cultivated fields were ploughed but once a year and rather poorly at that, for the land ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro

... speeds the destroyer, urged by an infernal influence which maddens the more intensely because its victim strives vainly to struggle against it: on, on, over the beaten road—over the fallow field—over the cottager's garden—over the grounds of ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... Gowbarrow Park, the lover of Nature might linger for hours. Here is a powerful Brook, which dashes among rocks through a deep glen, hung on every side with a rich and happy intermixture of native wood; here are beds of luxuriant fern, aged hawthorns, and hollies decked with honeysuckles; and fallow-deer glancing and bounding over the lawns and through the thickets. These are the attractions of the retired views, or constitute a foreground for ever-varying pictures of the majestic Lake, forced to take a winding course by bold promontories, and environed by mountains of sublime form, towering ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... well as wicked. I do not mean to say that he is necessarily unwilling to grant what he would call "decent hours of labour." He may treat men like dirt; but if you want to make money, even out of dirt, you must let it lie fallow by some rotation of rest. He may treat men as dogs, but unless he is a lunatic he will for certain ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton

... violent commotions luxuriant lands often become barren wastes, and for several years produce no thriving vegetation. Several Quebradas in the province of Truxillo, formerly remarkable for their fertility in grain, were left fallow for twenty years after the earthquake of 1630, as the soil would produce nothing. Similar cases occurred at Supe, Huaura, Lima, and Yca. All kinds of grain appear to be very susceptible to the changes produced by earthquakes. ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... Neil Bonner's mind had lain fallow. Little that was new had been added to it, but it had undergone a process of selection. It had, so to say, been purged of the trivial and superfluous. He had lived quick years, down in the world; and, up in the wilds, time had been ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... rolling grass with clumps and glades of great trees in their July bravery—more trees than Paul imagined could be in the world. There were sunlit upland patches and cool dells of shade carpeted with golden buttercups, where cattle fed lazily. Once a herd of fallow deer browsing by the wayside scuttled away at the noisy approach of the brakes. Only afterward did Paul learn their name and nature: to him then they were mythical beasts of fairyland. Once also the ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... Heard the Falls of Minnehaha Calling to him through the silence. "Pleasant is the sound!" he murmured, "Pleasant is the voice that calls me!" On the outskirts of the forests, 'Twixt the shadow and the sunshine, Herds of fallow deer were feeding, But they saw not Hiawatha; To his bow he whispered, "Fail not!" To his arrow whispered, "Swerve not!" Sent it singing on its errand, To the red heart of the roebuck; Threw the deer across his shoulder, And sped forward without pausing. At the doorway of his wigwam Sat the ancient ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... made haste to disappear from the scene and had double-locked his door. These gentlemen avoided mutual explanations, though they were none of them deceived as to the reasons which had brought them together. Vandeuvres, who had had a very bad time at play, had really conceived the notion of lying fallow for a season, and he was counting on Nana's presence in the neighborhood as a safeguard against excessive boredom. Fauchery had taken advantage of the holidays granted him by Rose, who just then was extremely busy. He was thinking of discussing a second notice ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... we look for this heavenly plant amongst the unrenewed children of men—it grows not on the corrupt soil of human nature; it springs only where the ploughshare of true repentance has broken up the fallow ground of the heart, and where faith in a crucified Saviour has purified it, and where the blessed Holy Spirit has taken permanent possession. It is the love of God—not only love to God, but like God, from God, and fixed on the same objects and ends which He loves. It is ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth

... of land near the town of Cordova, within a hundred miles of Vera Cruz. There were one-half million acres of rich land, suitable for the three Big C's of southern countries, cotton, cane and coffee. But until now the strip had not been cultivated. The Church had held it fallow. Then the Republic had nationalized it; and the Empire was selling it to the Americans at $1.25 an acre. The hopeful settlement ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... good people carried the gift of the earthquake—carried him with much anxiety and more exultation—had no very distinctive features. It had many fields in grass, many in crop, and some lying fallow—all softly undulating. It had some trees, and everywhere hedges dividing fields whose strange shapes witnessed to a complicated history, of which few could tell anything. Here and there in the hollows ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... sure of tha-at, baker," cried the Provost, in the false, loud voice of a man defending a position which he knows to be unsound; "I'm no so sure of that at a-all. A-a-ah, mind ye," he drawled persuasively, "he's a hardy fallow, that Gilmour. I've no doubt he gied Gourlay a good dig or two. Let us howp they will ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... which had on them the moss and lichens and superficial soil of centuries, and which had fancied, in that heavy semi-consciousness which belongs to stumps and stones, that they were fixed forever. As the teams and the ploughshares pass over the ground which has lain fallow so long, they leave, God knows, and millions of bleeding hearts know, a very desolate prospect in the upheaved furrows behind them. It is very black, very rough, very desert to the eye, and in spots it is very bloody. This is what war does. So ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... sitting up beside his father, and trying to talk learnedly of "crops and fallow-land, good timber, and pretty fair orchards." His father listened when he spoke, and quietly corrected his mistakes, without showing him the least sign of contempt, or making him feel ...
— Hatty and Marcus - or, First Steps in the Better Path • Aunt Friendly

... was off to the basement like one of Infant's own fallow-deer. The stables gave me what I wanted, and coming back with it through a dark passage, I ran squarely into Ipps. 'Go on!' he grunted. 'The minute he lays hands on Master Bobby, Master Bobby's saved. But that person ought to be told how near he came to being ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... pure and valuable of all that is poured into it, to be stored for future use. It is a lightning-rod that conducts away from the body all superfluous electricity. It does not harm a sensible child to put it to study early, but it destroys a dull one. Let your poor soil lie fallow, but harvest your rich mould, and you shall be repaid, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... when it was being prepared for crop or was under crop. After harvest the land was grazed in common by the village flocks; and each year a half or a third of the land was not plowed at all, but lay fallow and formed part of the common pasture. Under this system there was no opportunity for individual initiative in varying the rotation of crops or the dates of plowing and seed time; the use of the land in ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley

... patience] By Heaven, this is worse than your cant about love and beauty. Clever dolt that you are, is a man no better than a worm, or a dog than a wolf, because he gets tired of everything? Shall he give up eating because he destroys his appetite in the act of gratifying it? Is a field idle when it is fallow? Can the Commander expend his hellish energy here without accumulating heavenly energy for his next term of blessedness? Granted that the great Life Force has hit on the device of the clockmaker's pendulum, and uses the earth for its bob; that the history of each oscillation, ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... the young girl. All those that she had seen had horrified her with their fallow-deer laughter and ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert

... clothe the land. The day in which the inhabitants were cleansed from their sins was to be the day in which the land was to be raised from its ruin. Cities are to be rebuilt, the ground that had lain fallow and tangled with briers and thorns is to be tilled, and to bloom like Eden, a restored paradise. How far the fulfilment has halted behind the promise, the melancholy condition of Palestine to-day may remind us. Whether the literal fulfilment is to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... interest in many a note of facts, that had seemed to me extraordinary, admirable, or amusing, and when the claims of an arduous profession prevented me from pursuing my favorite occupation of studying the history of Holland, my mother's home, in the old way, never wearied of reminding me of the fallow material, that ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... ever present at the examination of a criminal? Have you watched his tricks, his turns, his evasions, his distinctions, his equivocations? Beaten, all his assertions overthrown, pursued like a fallow deer by the in exorable judge, tracked from hypothesis to hypothesis,—he makes a statement, he corrects it, retracts it, contradicts it, he exhausts all the tricks of dialectics, more subtle, more ingenious a thousand times than he who invented ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... intermission to provide sustenance, though often, by reason of the excessive quantity raised, scarcely anything could be got for it. Tobacco is not now considered peculiarly and excessively exhaustive; in a judicious rotation, especially as a preparation for wheat, it is an admirable fallow crop, and, under a scientific system of agriculture, it is grown with no continued detriment to the soil. But in Virginia it was grown without interruption or alternation, and the plantations rapidly ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... the vastness of the whole—the extent of its woods and the wideness of its plains. In its inhabitants also the English forest differs from the Scottish; instead of the stag and the roebuck, it is frequented by cattle and fallow-deer, and exchanges the scream of the eagle and the falcon for the crowing of pheasants, and the melody of the nightingale. The Scottish forest, no doubt, is the sublimer scene, and speaks to the imagination ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... being filled with an unquenchable desire for vengeance, was so dreaded by his German neighbors, that finally their fear became greater than their courage. The lands bordering upon Spychow, were lying fallow; the forests were overgrown with wild hops and the meadows with reeds. Several German knights tried to settle in the neighborhood of Spychow; but everyone of them after a time, preferred to abandon his estate held ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... spoiled of their goods, they were also debarred of their accustomed games and pastimes. [Sidenote: The forrests seized into the kings hands. Matth. Paris.] For where naturallie (as they doo vnto this daie) they tooke great pleasure in hunting of dere, both red and fallow, in the woods and forrests about without restraint, king William seizing the most part of the same forests into his owne hands, appointed a punishment to be executed vpon all such offendors; namelie, to haue their eies put out. And to ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (1 of 12) - William the Conqueror • Raphael Holinshed

... spot, and found some chairs near an ancient, ivy-covered tree-trunk, surrounded by an iron fence. The sun was shining brightly, and a fawn, which had strayed from the small herd of fallow deer, left off browsing to gaze. As Jimmy and Bridget sat down it ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb

... New Zealand went beside All the way, all the way, To the resting-place of her Highland Chief; Much she thought she could not say; He found her a land of many domains, Maiden forest and fallow plains — He left her a land of many homes, The pearl of the world where the sea wind roams, And New Zealand ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... immense blue-brown landscape on the other, ranging away to the faint line of the chalk downs in the south; the downward slope of the park, to the great square of red stable buildings in the hollow; the horses coming slowly towards him in single file. Cawing rooks streamed back from the fallow-fields across the valley. Thrushes and blackbirds carolled. A wren, in the bramble brake close by, broke into sharp sweet song. The recurrent ring of an axe came from somewhere away in the fir plantations, and the strident rasping ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... country, and make it still bleaker by suggested contrast. Even the waste places by the side of the road were not, as Hawthorne liked to put it, "taken back to Nature" by any decent covering of vegetation. Wherever the land had the chance, it seemed to lie fallow. There is a certain tawny nudity of the South, bare sun-burnt plains, coloured like a lion, and hills clothed only in the blue transparent air; but this was of another description—this was the nakedness of the North; the earth seemed to know ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... God; and every grief that stoops upon our path may be, and will be, if we keep near that dear Lord, changed into its own opposite, and become the source of blessedness else unattainable. Every stroke of the bright, sharp ploughshare that goes through the fallow ground, and every dark winter's day of pulverising frost and lashing tempest and howling wind, are represented in the broad acres, waving with the golden grain. All your griefs and mine, brother, if we carry ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... ditch beside him, who bellows that he'd as soon die mad hunting rats as be preached to death on a cold fallow. They laughed round him at this, but Jack Marget falls on his knees, and very presumptuously petitions that he may be appointed to die to save the rest of his people. This was enough to thrust 'em back into their melancholy. ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling

... in sober lays, How George, Nim, Dan, Dean,[1] pass their days; And, should our Gaulstown's wit grow fallow, Yet Neget quis carmina Gallo? Here (by the way) by Gallus mean I Not Sheridan, but friend Delany. Begin, my Muse! First from our bowers We sally forth at different hours; At seven the Dean, in night-gown drest, Goes round the house to wake ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... backs but haire, and haue great tailes like the sheepe in Syria. There be diuers sorts of wild beests, as the Antilope, (whereof M. Lancaster killed one of the bignes of a yong colt) the red and fallow Deere, with other great beasts vnknowen vnto vs. Here are also great store of ouer-growen monkies. As touching our proceeding vpon our voyage, it was thought good rather to proceed with two ships wel manned, then with three euill manned: for here wee ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt

... unerring aim and irresistible force. These arrows are often pointed against the harmless animals of the desert, which increase and multiply in the absence of their most formidable enemy; the hare, the goat, the roebuck, the fallow-deer, the stag, the elk, and the antelope. The vigor and patience, both of the men and horses, are continually exercised by the fatigues of the chase; and the plentiful supply of game contributes to the subsistence, and even luxury, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... Laidlaw than at home; and I added, 'But I will not take Hector with me, for he is constantly quarrelling with the rest of the dogs, singing music, or breeding some uproar.' 'Na, na,' quoth she, 'leave Hector with me; I like aye best to have him at hame, poor fallow.' ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... domesticated, and the invertebrate bees and silk-moths must not be forgotten. It is not very easy to draw a line between domesticated animals and animals that are often bred in partial or complete captivity. Such antelopes as elands, fallow-deer, roe-deer, and the ostriches of ostrich farms are on ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... were told that it was a matter of a single short campaign, ending in a speedy peace. But two long years had now passed, and Bulgaria's manhood still stood mobilized in distant Macedonia, while at home the fields went fallow, and the scanty harvests, reaped by women and children, had to be shared with the German. Everywhere there was increasing want, sometimes semi-starvation. Bulgaria, like Russia, was proving that a primitive agricultural ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various



Words linked to "Fallow" :   unbroken, tillage, plowland, unploughed, unexploited, unplowed, undeveloped, tilth, farmland, fallow deer, ploughland, cultivated land, tilled land



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com