Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
to stow away

to stow away

10 7.4
To hide on a ship or plane to travel secretly without paying
  • phrasal verb
  • /stoʊ əˈweɪ/
translation icon : hacerse polizón
  • No, but she's safe for the moment; she stowed away on the tanker truck.

Examples

  • The boy managed to stow away on the ferry without anyone noticing.

  • Two young girls stowed away under the tarp.

    No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005)

  • I heard you were going to stow away.

    Beast (2018)

  • - Did he stow away on purpose?

    Stowaway (2021)

  • I stowed away for three months on your ship.

    Robin Hood (2018)

  • At the first opportunity, I stowed away on the train traveling west.

    Fiction book (1993)

  • But nevertheless, I took the risk and stowed away on the train.

    Fiction book (1993)

  • I stowed away on one of Ryan's ships.

    Fiction book (1997)

  • Stowing away on a spaceship.

    Conquest of Space (1955)

  • The book follows the life of the title character, Arthur Pym, a child who stows away on a whaling ship with his friend Augustus.

    Blog text (26)

How Hidden

to hoard
45 4.8
to stow away
10 7.4
to squirrel
  • Informal
9 6.7
to hide
∞ 1.0
to put away
225 2.0

Surface Forms

stow away infinitive
stowed away past
stowed away past participle
stowing away present participle
stows away third person singular

Morphology

stow + away

The components 'stow' (to pack/put away) and 'away' (out of sight/motion to another place) transparently convey a sense of putting something out of sight, so a learner can infer a general meaning of hiding or putting away. However, the specific intransitive sense 'to hide oneself on a ship/aircraft to travel secretly and without paying' and the shift from packing objects to concealing a person is a specialized extension that is not fully predictable without prior exposure.

Etymology

Stow away comes from a simple, real picture: people would stow (hide) themselves away in a ship's cargo area or under a plane so they were not seen while travelling. So, stow away now means 'to hide on a vehicle to travel secretly and without paying'.