Turf is the surface layer of grass and its roots. Lay turf, a strip of turf, turf the lawn.
It is laid as cut rolls and knits into the soil below within weeks, which is why turfing gives an instant lawn where seed takes a season. The turf means horse racing. Turf war means a fight over territory. Note that the word is Old English and also means peat cut for fuel.
1nounturfThe surface layer of grass and its roots.
“The gardeners laid new turf on the football pitch.”
turf is a ground covering.
Old English turf means turf or a piece of sod, from a Germanic root. The peat sense is as old as the grass one.
Proto-Indo-European
*derbʰ- — tuft, grass
Proto-Germanic
*turbz — turf, lawn
Proto-West Germanic
*turb — turf, peat
Old English
turf — turf, sod, soil, piece of grass-covered earth, greensward
Middle English
turf
English, today
turf
From Middle English turf, torf, from Old English turf (“turf, sod, soil, piece of grass-covered earth, greensward”), from Proto-West Germanic turb (“turf, peat”), from Proto-Germanic turbz (“turf, lawn”), from Proto-Indo-European derbʰ- (“tuft, grass”). 2 Cognate with Scots turr, truff (“turf, peat”), Dutch turf (“turf”), Middle Low German torf (“peat, turf”) (whence German Torf and German Low German Torf), Danish tørv (“peat”), Faroese -, Icelandic -, Norwegian -, and Swedish torv (“turf”), nrn torv (“peat”), French tourbe (“peat”), Finnish turve (“turf”), Lithuanian darbas (“bunch of leaves”), durpės (“peat”), Sanskrit दर्भ (“a type of grass”), दूर्वा (“bent grass”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA