turf

CEFRB1

/tɝf/

noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    The surface layer of grass and soil.

  2. 02

    noun

    An area considered someone's own territory.

Examples

  • A stone is heavy on its own turf.

  • You kind of are on her turf.

At a glance

Sits at B1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
5

Also pronounced

  • /teːf/

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. A block of peat used as fuel.

  2. A piece of such a layer cut from the soil. May be used as sod to make a lawn, dried for peat, stacked to form earthen structures, etc.

  3. A layer of earth covered with grass; sod.

More examples

In context

  • Eight managers were turfed after the merger of the two companies.

  • In climates where grass struggles to grow, turf is usually used instead on sports fields.

  • The company turfed the concept car because the prototype performed poorly.

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The groundskeeper and players carefully maintained the blank of the football field.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

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”). Cognates 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”), Norn *torv (“peat”), French tourbe (“peat”), Finnish turve (“turf”), Lithuanian darbas (“bunch of leaves”), durpės (“peat”), Sanskrit दर्भ (darbhá, “a type of grass”), दूर्वा (dū́rvā, “bent grass”)....