prow

• (US, UK) IPA^(key): /pɹaʊ/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• (obsolete) IPA^(key): /pɹoʊ/[1]
• Rhymes: -aʊ

From Middle French proue, proe, from Ligurian prua, proa, from Latin prōra, from Ancient Greek πρῷρα (prôira).

prow (plural prows)

1. (nautical) The front part of a vessel

   Synonyms: beak, bow, forestem, prore, stem

   • 1674, John Milton, Paradise Lost:

     The floating vessel swum / Uplifted, and secure with beaked prow / rode tilting o'er the waves.

   • 1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., OCLC 18478577; republished as chapter IV, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, volume 1, New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, 1927, OCLC 988016180:

     We were already rather close in; but I ordered the U-33's prow turned inshore and we crept slowly along, constantly dipping up the water and tasting it to assure ourselves that we didn't get outside the fresh-water current.

2. A vessel

From Middle English prow, from Old French prou, from Late Latin prode; more at proud.

prow (comparative prower, superlative prowest)

1. (archaic) Brave, valiant, gallant. [2]
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto III”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, OCLC 960102938:

     For they be two the prowest knights on ground, / And oft approu’d in many hard assay […]

• prowess

prow (plural prows)

1. Alternative form of proa

• pow'r, wrop