Hoed

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /həʊd/

Definitions

1. To turn over soil and remove weeds using a hand-held farming instrument typically utilized in gardening tasks
2. To prepare and aerate the ground for planting by employing a specific tool designed for soil cultivation
3. To aerate and cultivate soil by using a handheld tool that removes unwanted plants and softens the ground for agricultural or gardening purposes

Etymology: The verb "hoed" is simply the past tense and past participle of "hoe," so its real story is the history of the tool and its name. The name "hoe" goes back to Old French and Latin roots, and it is related to the Old English "hew," meaning to cut or chop, which is why the word is often connected with "hew" as its distant cousin. A hoe, in other words, was named for the action of cutting into the ground. The same word also shares a surprising link with an unrelated creature. Dutch "haai" means "shark," and that Dutch word is a cognate of English "hoe," so the sea predator and the garden tool share a common ancestry. Both words trace back to a shared Germanic base, a reminder that unrelated-looking English words can have sibling languages that took very different paths.

Synonyms: tilled, cultivated