[f. prec. sb.]
1. trans. † a. To furnish with a trough or troughs for irrigation or drainage. dial. Obs. b. Geol. To form into a trough or into the shape of a trough. c. To treat in some way in a trough; to stain, gauge, or mold in a trough.
1668. Demise of Coal Mine (Arncliffe Hall MSS.). To carry a sough or watergate through the demised ground … and to leave the same trowed and scoured.
1839. Murchison, Silur. Syst., I. xxix. 388. This spur reposes conformably on the Old Red Sandstone … being troughed between the latter and the ridge of Old Red Sandstone to the South of it.
1872. W. S. Symonds, Rec. Rocks, viii. 277. The Pilton rocks are rolled and troughed to a great extent about Ashford.
1881. Greener, Gun, 254. The same method of troughing is required to brown them a dark brown.
1887. Daily News, 20 May, 3/2. Sword-bayonets … in store were re-tested,… being sprung round a curved block 24 inches high,… troughed and gauged.
1905. Daily Chron., 25 July, 4/4. Cottages which have unusual features…—concrete troughed between upright timbers.
2. intr. To feed at or as at a trough; to feed swinishly.
1748. Richardson, Clarissa (1811), VIII. 168. What miry wallowers the generality of men of our class are in themselves, and constantly trough and sty with.
† 3. Mining. Of a vein: To dip. Obs. rare.
1747. Hooson, Miner’s Dict., R ij. When Veins or Pipes take a chop up higher than ordinary into their proper Lids, whethersoever the Lids be Stone, Mixt-beds, &c., this is opposite to Troughing or Choping down.
Hence Troughed ppl. a., Troughing vbl. sb. and ppl. a.
1897. Daily News, 31 Dec., 2/1. A rather lumbering looking ‘troughing’ machine automatically scours the edges with emery until the embryo sword-bayonet will just fit in flat into a gauge or ‘trough.’
1898. G. Meredith, Odes Fr. Hist., Napoleon, vi. Heap over heap [of horses and men] Right through the troughed black lines turned to bunches or shreds, or a fog.
