ppl. a. Also 4 unsowe, -sawe. [UN-1 8 b. Cf. OE. unsáwen (of land), ON. úsáinn, and prec.]
1. Of seed: Not sown; left without being sown. Also of vegetation: Growing without having been sown.
c. 1374. Chaucer, Former Age, 10. Corn vp-sprong vnsowe of mannes hond.
15[?]. in Thynne, Animadv., etc. (1875), 88. Wher the seyd of god is vnsawn.
1539–40. N. C. Wills (Surtees), 169, All my corne sowen and unsowen.
1573. Tusser, Husb. (1878), 85. Sowe lintels ye may, and peason gray. Keepe white vnsowne, till more be knowne.
1626. Bacon, Sylva, § 516. Mushromes … come vp so hastily: As in a Night; And yet they are Vnsowne.
1693. Dryden, Ovid’s Met., I. 138. The Flow’rs un-sown, in Fields and Meadows reign’d.
1883. R. W. Dixon, Mano, I. iv. 10. The crops remained unsown this year.
2. Of land: Not supplied with seed.
c. 1400. Gamelyn, 83. He þought on his landes þat lay vnsawe.
a. 1513. Fabyan, Chron., IV. lxxv. 53. The grounde was vntylled and vnsowen, Wherof ensued great scarsytie.
1539. Act 31 Hen. VIII., c. 5. Duryng all suche time as the same landes shalbe and remayne vnsowen.
1600. Surflet, Countrie Farme, I. xxiv. 147. The trampling which they keepe about trees, medowes, and vnsowne places.
1626. Bacon, Sylva, § 482. If the Ground lie fallow, and vnsowne.
1725. Pope, Odyssey, IX. 143. Nor knows the soil to feed the fleecy care,… But uninhabited, untill’d, unsown It lies.
1730. Lyttelton, Epist. to Pope, 28. Unhappy Italy!… Her cities [are] desert and her fields unsown.
1842. Tennyson, Dora, 71. Dora … went her way Across the wheat, and sat upon a mound That was unsown.
