It's Merriam-Webster's word of the day for April 14th.

Today's word is f-r-l-o-a-l-l-a-O-N-G, F-L-O-N-G, Furlong is a noun. A furlong is a unit of distance equal to

220 yards, about 201 meters, and is used chiefly in horse racing.

Here's the word used in a sentence from Southern Living by Steve Bender.

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 flocks and drowning the daylilies.

Furlong is an English original. drowning the daylilies.

Furlong is an English original that can be traced back to the old English word Furlang, a combination

of the noun forr meaning furrow and the adjective lang, meaning long.

Though now standardized as a length of 220 yards, or one-eighth 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, 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, for long is often encountered in references to horse racing.

With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski. Visit Marion Webster.com today for definitions, word play, and trending word lookups.