Definitions

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

  • intransitive verb To think or suppose.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To believe; trust.
  • To think; suppose.
  • noun A channel or spout of wood for conveying water to a mill; a flume: sometimes used in the plural with the same sense: as, the mill-trows.
  • noun A boat with an open live-well for fish; a sort of fishing-smack or lighter.
  • noun Same as drow and troll.

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

  • verb Archaic To believe; to trust; to think or suppose.
  • noun A boat with an open well amidships. It is used in spearing fish.

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

  • noun obsolete, uncountable trust or faith
  • verb obsolete To trust or believe
  • verb obsolete To have confidence in, or to give credence to
  • noun dated, nautical, countable Any of several flat-bottomed sailing boats used for fishing or for carrying bulk goods
  • noun Scotland, dated troll

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English trowen, from Old English trēowian, to trust; see deru- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old English truwian, akin to German trauen

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Examples

Comments

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  • Archaic: to believe, think, or suppose.

    (Origin: bef. 900; ME trowen, OE tréow(i)an to believe, deriv. of tréow belief; akin to ON trūa, G trauen, Goth trauan to trust, believe)

    May 6, 2007

  • Yet my teasing ways, it seems, are intolerable-- Are women only to tease, I trow?

    Lovelace to Belford, Clarissa by Samuel Richardson

    December 13, 2007

  • Also Orkney and Shetland word for a troll.

    July 7, 2008

  • "And when Sir Launcelot saw that, he turned and went thither as the head came from. And in the meanwhile he trowed that himself and Sir Ector rode till that they came to a rich man’s house where there was a wedding."

    - Thomas Malory, 'The Holy Grail'.

    September 13, 2009