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Furlong Has Old English Roots
Furlong is an English original that can be traced back to Old English furlang, a combination of the noun furh (“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—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.
Examples of furlong in a Sentence
Eric Sondheimer, Los Angeles Times, 28 May 2024
The bay colt and jockey Victor Espinoza surged to the lead with a furlong to go and thundered across the finish line a length ahead in the 2015 Kentucky Derby.
—Beth Harris, Chicago Tribune, 4 May 2024
See all Example Sentences for furlong 
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Cite this Entry
“Furlong.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/furlong. Accessed 5 Jun. 2024.
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furlong
noun
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