What does frow mean?
Frow is an archaic English noun denoting a woman, most specifically a married woman or the female head of a household. It descends from Old English words for a lady or mistress of a house and belongs to the same Germanic family as the modern German 'Frau' and the Dutch 'vrouw', all reflecting an ancient root meaning 'lady' or 'mistress'. In everyday speech of past centuries a frow was simply the goodwife of a farm or cottage, responsible for the domestic economy of the home. By the nineteenth century the term had acquired a second, more comic flavor: it could describe an unfashionably dressed woman, a dowdy figure behind the times. Today frow survives chiefly in historical writing and dialect studies, prized by readers who enjoy the rich vocabulary English has retired. It should not be confused with the similarly named 'froe', a woodworker's cleaving tool.
A woman; specifically a married woman or mistress of a household.
"Every frow in the parish brought a pie to the church fair."
Archaic; encountered mainly in historical and dialectal contexts.
A dowdily or unfashionably dressed woman.
"She called herself an old frow and laughed at her own worn apron."
Later vernacular sense; humorous rather than insulting in tone.
Standard pluralization by adding -s; used when speaking of several women so described.
"The market square was crowded with frows haggling over cloth and butter."
Before 'Mrs.' took over, English speakers called a married woman a frow — a word that shares its ancient Germanic root with the modern German 'Frau'.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of frow
Frow descends from Old English terms such as 'frouwe' or 'freow', meaning a lady or woman of rank, which share a common Germanic root with the German 'Frau' and the Dutch 'vrouw'. The underlying Proto-Germanic word carried the sense of 'lady' or 'mistress', making these names true continental cognates. In Middle English and early modern usage the word settled into ordinary vocabulary as a designation for a wife or housewife, and it remained in regional and dialectal use into recent centuries, when it also picked up its association with dowdy dress.
How frow is actually used
The word is archaic and appears today mainly in historical fiction, folklore scholarship, and older dictionaries; modern readers will most often encounter it in texts from before the twentieth century.
Easily confused with frow
A froe is a wedge-shaped carpenter's tool for splitting shingles; some sources spell this tool 'frow', but it is entirely unrelated in origin to 'frow' as a word for a woman.
'Froward' means contrary or difficult to deal with and derives from 'fro' ('away'), whereas 'frow' denotes a woman.