Middle English harewe, harwe, harow, of uncertain origin
Note: The Oxford English Dictionary, first edition, suggests inheritance from an unattested Old English *hearwe or *hearge, though the Middle English word is perhaps more likely a loan from Old Norse, despite the phonetic objections—compare Norwegian harv, horv "harrow," Swedish harv, Danish harve, Old Icelandic herfi. The further origin of the Scandinavian word is unclear. G. Kroonen, Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic (Brill, 2013) suggests as an etymon *harbō, akin to *harbjan- "to pluck" (whence, allegedly, Norwegian dialect herva "to snatch"), akin to Germanic *harbista- "autumn" and Latin carpere "to pluck, pick, gather" (see harvest entry 1). A harrow, however, is not a tool for plucking or gathering.
Verb (2)
Middle English harwen, harowen, derivative of harwe, harowharrow entry 2
First Known Use
Verb (1)
before the 12th century, in the meaning defined above