furlong

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 14, 2024 is: furlong \FER-lawng\ noun

A furlong is a unit of distance equal to 220 yards (about 201 meters), and is used chiefly in horse racing.

// To win the [Kentucky Derby](https://www.britannica.com/sports/Kentucky-Derby), a [Thoroughbred](https://bit.ly/3wks5uF) must run 10 furlongs, or one and 1/4 miles.

[See the entry >](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/furlong)

Examples:

“My battle with this monster began a decade ago when a wayward seedling popped up in my perennial bed. It subsequently flowered so gloriously that, like a common dolt, I left it there. What I didn’t realize is that every bloom drops lots of seeds. Even worse, after the plant’s foliage withers in summer, spreading roots grow by the furlong in every direction. A pink primrose tsunami swept over my garden the following spring, choking the phlox and drowning the daylilies.” — Steve Bender, Southern Living, 26 Sept. 2023

Did you know?

Furlong is an English original that can be traced back to Old English furlang, a combination of the noun furh (“[furrow](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/furrow)”) and the adjective lang (“long”). Though now standardized as a length of 220 yards (or 1/8th of a mile), the furlong was originally defined less precisely as the length of a furrow—a trench in the earth made by a plow—in a cultivated field. This length was equal to the long side of an [acre](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/acre)—an area originally defined as the amount of arable land that could be plowed by a yoke of oxen in a day, but later standardized as an area measuring 220 yards (one furlong) by 22 yards, and now defined as any area measuring 4,840 square yards. In contemporary usage, furlong is often encountered in references to horse racing.