furlong
Part of speech: noun
Morphological type: simple
Topics: agriculture
business
lifestyle
Etymology: PIE word
 *dlongʰos
From Middle English furlong, forlong (“unit of distance about one-eighth of a mile; quantity of land equal to one square furlong; racetrack for foot races; foot race”) [and other forms], from Old English furlang, furlung, from furh (“a furrow”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *perḱ- (“to dig; to open; to rip up”) + lang (“long”, adjective) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dlongʰos (“long”)), originally the typical length of a furrow in an average field.
Inflected forms:
form: furlongs
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: furlong
pos: noun
tags: archaic
plural
form: forlong
pos: noun
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: A unit of distance equal to one-eighth of a mile (220 yards, or 201.168 metres), now mainly used in measuring distances in farmland and horse racing.
pos: noun
examples: Novv vvould I giue a thouſand furlongs of Sea, for an Acre of barren ground: Long heath, Brovvne firrs, any thing; the vvills aboue be done, but I vvould faine dye a dry death.
And the winepreſſe vvas troden vvithout the citie, and blood came out of the vvinepreſſe, euen vnto the horſe bridles, by the ſpace of a thouſand and ſixe hundred furlongs.
[T]he Otter ſmels a fiſh forty furlong off him in the water; […]
[N]ovv before he had gone far, he entered into a very narrovv paſſage, vvhich vvas about a furlong off the Porters Lodge, and looking very narrovvly before him as he vvent, he eſpied tvvo Lions in the vvay.
The fresh and desperate onset bore / The foes three furlongs back and more, / Leaving their noblest in their gore.
At first some intervening icebergs prevented Captain Warrens from distinctly seeing any thing except her masts but he was struck with the strange manner in which her sails were disposed, and with the dismantled aspect of her yards and rigging. She continued to go before the wind for a few furlongs, and then grounding upon the low icebergs, remained motionless.
His day's ride is a furlong space, / His city tops a glimmering haze.
His [the racehorse Ten Broeck's] next appearance was in the Kentucky Derby, at Louisville, won by Aristides, but was unplaced. At the Fall meeting at Lexington he was again unsuccessful in the sweepstakes for three-year olds,^([sic]) but three days afterward he defeated Bob Woolley and others in another sweepstakes of a mile and five furlongs.
A private wireless telegraph which would transmit by dot and dash system the result of a national equine handicap (flat or steeplechase) of 1 or more miles and furlongs won by an outsider at odds of 50 to 1 at 3 hr. 8 m. p. m. at Ascot (Greenwich time) the message being received and available for betting purposes in Dublin at 2.59 p. m. (Dunsink time).
[Frankie] Dettori took a bold approach to Trawlerman's wide draw in stall 20, galloping alone and in a clear lead towards the far rail as his 19 opponents sorted themselves out on the inside. He eventually edged across as they turned out of the back, but his carefully worked plan had apparently been to little avail as the well-fancied Earl Of Tyrone edged ahead two furlongs out with Alfred Boucher, a winner on Wednesday's card, also gaining ground.
gloss: A unit of land area one furlong (sense 1) square (ten acres, or about four hectares).
pos: noun
tags: dated
gloss: An undefined portion of an unenclosed field.
pos: noun
tags: UK
dated
dialectal
gloss: Synonym of stadion (“a Greek unit of distance based on standardized footraces, equivalent to about 185.4 metres”).
pos: noun
tags: historical
gloss: Synonym of headland (“unploughed boundary of a field”).
pos: noun
tags: dialectal
gloss: Synonym of land (“the ground left unploughed between furrows”).
pos: noun
tags: dialectal
gloss: Synonym of land (“any of several portions into which a field is divided for ploughing”).
pos: noun
tags: dialectal
Translations: