Meaning & use
tow
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Meanings
verbtransitive
To pull a vehicle, boat or other heavy object along behind another vehicle using a rope, chain or hitch.
Grammar: Takes an object: tow the trailer.
Patterns
- tow something to somewhere
- tow something behind something
A tractor towed our car out of the muddy field.
Our truck can tow a small caravan.
The police towed the illegally parked van.
nouncountable
An act of pulling a vehicle or boat along, or the state of being pulled.
Grammar: Often used with an or give: give someone a tow.
Patterns
- give someone a tow
- take a tow
My car broke down, so a neighbor gave me a tow to the garage.
The yacht needed a tow back to harbor.
He asked the driver for a tow after the tire blew.
phrasefixed phraseinformal
In tow means accompanying someone and following closely behind them.
Grammar: Comes after a noun or verb: she arrived with two children in tow.
Patterns
- with someone in tow
He turned up at the party with three friends in tow.
The teacher walked in with a line of students in tow.
She did the shopping with her toddler in tow.
Word forms
| third person singular | tows |
|---|---|
| past tense | towed |
| past participle | towed |
| -ing form | towing |
| plural | tows |
Common combinations
- tow a car
- We had to tow the car to the nearest garage.
- tow a trailer
- He tows a boat trailer behind his pickup.
- tow truck
- A tow truck arrived within twenty minutes.
- tow away
- Cars parked here will be towed away.
- tow rope
- She tied the tow rope to the front bumper.
- in tow
- The coach arrived with the whole team in tow.
Synonyms and how they differ
- haul
- Haul stresses the effort of dragging something heavy, and it is not limited to vehicles, while tow means pulling something that is hitched behind another vehicle.
- tug
- Tug can be a short, sharp pull by hand, while tow is a longer, sustained pull behind a vehicle or boat.
- drag
- Drag suggests pulling something along the ground with friction, which is rougher than the controlled pulling meant by tow.
- pull
- Pull is the general everyday verb, whereas tow is specific to vehicles and boats.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: tow or toe? tow or tow the line?
tow vs toe
Toe is the part of the foot and sounds the same as tow, but it has nothing to do with pulling.
tow vs tow the line
The correct idiom is toe the line, meaning to obey rules; people often write tow the line by mistake.
Practice
After the accident, the damaged car was ___ to a repair shop.
Choose one answer.
Towed is the past participle needed after was. Toed is a homophone of towed but refers to the foot, and towing or tow do not fit the passive structure.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “tow”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.