Other forms: troughs
A trough is a long open container that animals eat or drink from, low enough for a head to go straight into. A stone one in the corner of a field, a metal one filling from a pipe, pigs shoving each other along the edge.
It rhymes with off, not with though or through, and the spelling is a trap worth setting straight early. Away from the farm, a trough is the low point between two high ones: the trough between two waves, the trough of a graph, an economy sitting in a trough after a boom. Weather forecasters use it for a long band of low pressure moving in from the west. Feeding trough, water trough and drinking trough are the everyday compounds, and to have your snout in the trough is to be taking more than your share of public money. The opposite is peak, and the two words travel together through every chart.
1nountroughA long, open container that animals feed or drink from.
“The horses lined up at the trough as soon as the tap ran.”
2nounpointThe low point between two waves, peaks or busy periods.
“Sales hit a trough in February and climbed again in spring.”
3nounregionA long region of low air pressure.
“A trough of low pressure will bring rain to the west overnight.”
trough is a container.
Trough is Old English trog, a tub or basin for holding liquids, and it goes back to a Proto-Indo-European word for tree, *dóru. The first trough was a log with its middle hollowed out, which makes the word a cousin of tree itself. German Trog, Dutch trog and Swedish tråg are still standing in the same fields.
Proto-Indo-European
*dóru
Proto-Indo-European
*drukós
Proto-Germanic
*trugą
Proto-West Germanic
*trog
Old English
troh
Middle English
trogh
English, today
trough
Built from
From Middle English trogh, from Old English troh, trog (“a trough, tub, basin, vessel for containing liquids or other materials”), from Proto-West Germanic trog, from Proto-Germanic trugą, trugaz, from Proto-Indo-European drukós, enlargement of dóru (“tree”). See also West Frisian trôch, Dutch trog, German Trog, Danish trug, Swedish tråg; also mga drochta (“wooden basin”), xcl տարգալ (“ladle, spoon”). More at tree.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA