sow

To sow is to put seed into the ground so that it will grow. A handful scattered over a bed of soil in March, or a tractor drilling wheat in long straight lines across a field.

You sow seeds, and you can sow a place with something: sow the border with poppies. Sow is what you do with seed, plant is what you do with a seedling or a bulb, and grow is what the plant does afterwards. The figurative use is everywhere, in sow doubt, sow confusion, sow the seeds of a later disaster, and it is nearly always something small now that turns into something large and unwelcome later. You reap what you sow means the harvest matches the planting. Watch the pronunciation trap as well: this sow rhymes with go, while a different sow, spelled the same way, rhymes with cow and means a full-grown female pig. The past forms are sowed and sown.

Phrases it lives in

• reap what you sow — get the results, good or bad, of your own earlier actions
• sow the seeds of — do the small early thing that later grows into something big
• sow your wild oats — behave wildly while young, before settling down