Definition
nounA layer of earth covered with grass; sod.
nounA 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.
Sentence Examples
A stone is heavy on its own turf.
You kind of are on her turf.
Word Origin & History
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”).
Not cognate with Danish torv (“square, market, marketplace”), which is instead inherited from Old Norse torg (“marketplace”), from Old East Slavic търгъ (tŭrgŭ, “trade, trading, commerce, trade square”), ultimately from Proto-Slavic *tъ̑rgъ (“merchandise, commodity, wares”).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Miss Thorn began digging up the turf with her lofter: it was a painful moment for me. ¶ “You might at least have tried me, Mrs. Cooke,” I said."
— 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter VIII, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:
"It was a sixth successive defeat for Klopp in a major final and at the final whistle, with Karius burying his face into the turf, there was not exactly a stampede of team-mates wanting to console him."
— 2018 May 26, Daniel Taylor, “Liverpool go through after Mohamed Salah stops Manchester City fightback”, in The Guardian (London):
""It's an old custom the people had when they bought and sold land. They used to cut out a clod and hand it over to the buyer, and you weren't lawfully seised of your land - it didn't really belong to you - till the other fellow had actually given you a piece of it - like this." He held out the turves."
— 1906, Rudyard Kipling, Puck of Pook's Hill:
"Frodo and Sam went forward and saw that amidst the clamorous host were set three high-seats built of green turves."
— 1955, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King:
"In ordinary peat-bogs, however, where turves are cut, there is always a large percentage of waste peat resulting from the digging, drying or transport of the turves, which can be utilized only by moulding it."
— 1908, Karl Gayer and W. R. Fisher, edited by Sir William Schlich, Forest Utilization (Schlich's Manual of Forestry):