tallow

plural tallows

1. countableuncountableA hard animal fat obtained from suet, etc.; used in cooking as well as to make candles, soap and lubricants.

   "I have got a very fine shirt, which I am going to use for my wedding shirt; but there are three tallow stains on it which I want washed out[.]"

   1886, Peter Christen Asbjø￵rnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 240

   2 more examples

   Nor were the wool prospects much better. The pastoral industry, which had weathered the severe depression of the early forties by recourse to boiling down the sheep for their tallow, and was now firmly re-established as the staple industry of the colony, was threatened once more with eclipse.

   1929, M. Barnard Eldershaw, A House Is Built, chapter VIII, section ii

   Rendering is done by boiling the animal carcasses to separate the fat from the meat. At high temperatures, the fat floats as a creamy white substance called tallow, while the heavier protein sinks to the bottom, producing greaves, which can be fed to animals. Tallow is used to make candle wax or is mixed with ash and heated again to form soap.

   2005, Carmen Ferreiro, Mad Cow Disease, Infobase Publishing, →ISBN, page 13

present singular third person tallows · participle present tallowing · participle past tallowed · past tallowed

1. To grease or smear with tallow.
2. transitiveTo cause to have a large quantity of tallow; to fatten.

   to tallow sheep

3. intransitiveOf animals: to develop quantities of tallow.

   […] their beef is finer than that of the old short-horned breed, and they fatten much earlier and quicker, conveying still a vast depth of natural flesh, and tallowing within in the first degree.

   1824, R. W. Dickson, A Complete System of Improved Live Stock and Cattle, page 53