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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
John Cherwa, Los Angeles Times, 27 Sep. 2024
But, more often than not, teams falter in the last furlong, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
—Dan Freedman, Forbes, 21 Sep. 2024
The battleground in veteran Italian director Gianni Amelio’s atmospheric feature is nominally Europe in the last furlong of the 1914-18 conflict, but the real subject is the war that the Italian government declared on its own people.
—Damon Wise, Deadline, 31 Aug. 2024
Prince of Monaco finished second in the $500,000 Woody Stephens Stakes at seven furlongs.
—John Cherwa, Los Angeles Times, 8 June 2024
See all Example Sentences for furlong 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'furlong.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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Cite this Entry
“Furlong.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/furlong. Accessed 4 Nov. 2024.
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furlong
noun
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