farm
/fɑːm
/noun
1An area of land and its buildings, used for growing crops and rearing animals: a farm of 100 acres [as modifier]: farm workers...
- Total land in farms, at 46,400 acres, is unchanged from last year.
- Some species of waterfowl adapted to feeding on rice, barley, lettuce, and other crops grown on farms in California.
- The City of Hamburg owns two large organic farms.
Synonyms
smallholding, holding, farmstead, steading, grange, plantation, estate;
farmland, land, acreage, acres;
vineyard;
Scottish croft;
North American ranch;
Australian/New Zealand station;
in the West Indies pen;
in East Africa shamba;
in the Indian subcontinent tope
1.1A farmhouse: a half-timbered farm...
- There has been a flurry of school trips, including London Zoo, farms, museums and galleries and lots of visiting theatre groups.
- More than 40 of these cottages were built by the end of the 19th century together with a church, school, stores, workshops, a farm and even a fire station.
- He added that this goes for houses, flats, farms, factories and offices.
1.2 [with modifier] A place for breeding a particular type of animal or producing a specified crop: a fish farm...
- She coordinates preventative medicine programs and pathology at Hagen's parrot breeding farm and research institute.
- He owns the well-known breeding and stallion farm, Ballylinch Stud home of the legendary Tetrarch and part of the Mount Juliet Estate.
- He grew up on a grape and citrus farm at Robinvale, on the Murray River in north-west Victoria.
1.3 [with modifier] A place devoted to producing or promoting something: an energy farm...
- On one hand the government takes on money from JBIC and on the other it is promoting the destructive prawn farm cultivation.
- The welcoming committee is pure science fiction, a towering wind energy farm of sleek white windmills, five storeys high and filling the valley's entire widescreen width.
- At a Kurow dairy farm owned by Meridian Energy, this stray voltage was found to be around 1.5 volts.
verb
1 [no object] Make one’s living by growing crops or keeping livestock: he has farmed organically for years...
- There are still a lot of hungry farmers out there who want to make their living from farming.
- I am also aware that New Zealand has made its living by doing farming in a very functional and technologically targeted way.
- In fifty years time it appears there will be very few people in this county earning their living from farming on a full time basis.
Synonyms
be a farmer, practise farming, cultivate/till/work the land, till the soil, rear livestock, do agricultural work
1.1 [with object] Use (land) for growing crops and rearing animals: marshes are being drained in order to farm the land...
- He farmed some land, growing much of what my mother served our family at dinner time.
- Together she and her husband farmed the ranch land, and she bore seven children.
- In 1903, one hundred years ago, most people in Ireland lived in the countryside, farmed the land, cultivated the food they ate and had very little extra money.
Synonyms
cultivate, bring under cultivation, till, work, plough, dig, plant
1.2 [with object] Breed or grow (a type of livestock or crop) commercially: ostriches are farmed in South Africa and Australia (as adjective farmed) farmed salmon...
- Like all farmed livestock, salmon are regularly checked by veterinarians and occasionally require the use of licensed medicines.
- Two of them were game farms and the rest were used to farm crops and livestock.
- These movement restrictions apply to all farmed livestock within that area.
Synonyms
grow, cultivate, raise, plant, tend, bring on, harvest;
breed, rear, keep
2 [with object] (farm someone/thing out) Send out or subcontract work to others: it saves time and money to farm out some writing work to specialized companies...
- Spare ones will be farmed out to other universities which have expressed an interest in getting involved.
- If every year a handful of issues were farmed out to assemblies like this one, one issue per assembly, it would be a job that could be done at a few hours a week.
- Many tasks have been farmed out to private, unaccountable contractors.
Synonyms
contract out, outsource, assign to others, subcontract, delegate
2.1Arrange for a child to be looked after by someone, usually for payment: the babies are farmed out for five years...
- Her father's alcoholism plunged the family into poverty so humiliating that Dolly was farmed out to various generous strangers for upbringing.
- Whoever farmed me out for adoption put a lot of work into covering up everything about where - or who - I came from.
- Who, after all, would choose to work and farm their kids out in the morning if they could be in the same financial position while staying at home?
Synonyms
have fostered, have cared for, send to a childminder, put in care
2.2 dated Send a sports player temporarily to another team in return for a fee: he was farmed out in 1938 and '39 and came back for two games in 1940...
- The RFU, not the clubs, would employ players and farm them out to the clubs.
- It looked even bleaker when Steve bought in six summer signings and he was farmed out to Sunderland on loan.
- So he was farmed out for a month with instructions to delay his swing a bit, go to right field more often, improve his bunting and reduce strikeouts.
3 [with object] historical Allow someone to collect and keep the revenues from (a tax) on payment of a fee: the customs had been farmed to the collector for a fixed sum...
- The sum offered by Andocides and his associates was thirty-six talents, which (he claims) still allowed them a small profit in farming the tax.
- The market was supervised by a warden and by the fifteenth century that officer was farming revenues due the city from the market.
Phrases
buy back the farm
from farm to fork (or table)
sell off the farm
Derivatives
farmable
/ adjective ...- One hundred sixty of those acres are farmable, and about 80 of those are currently being farmed by a dozen thriving, independent farm businesses with scores of employees and thousands - if not tens of thousands - of customers.
- In addition, windmills, called ‘polder mills,’ pump excess underground water to keep these areas dry and farmable.
- China has about 20 percent of the world's population, but only 7 percent of the world's farmable land.
Origin
Middle English: from Old French ferme, from medieval Latin firma 'fixed payment', from Latin firmare 'fix, settle' (in medieval Latin 'contract for'), from firmus 'constant, firm'; compare with firm2. The noun originally denoted a fixed annual amount payable as rent or tax; this is reflected in sense 3 of the verb, which later gave rise to 'to subcontract' (sense 2 of the verb). The noun came to denote a lease, and, in the early 16th century, land leased for farming. The verb sense 'grow crops or keep livestock' dates from the early 19th century.
firm from Middle English:
Firm meaning ‘not yielding to pressure’ comes from Latin firmus, also the root of farm (Middle English), which originally meant a tax or rent. Firm meaning ‘a company or business’ has the same root, but the immediate origin is different. The Latin word had also given rise to Italian firma ‘confirmed by signature’, and in the late 16th century this was adopted into English to mean ‘an autograph or signature’. Over time it came to mean the name under which business was transacted by an organization, as in ‘trading under the firm of “Grant & Co.”’. Finally, in the late 18th century, firm became the term for a company.