To hallow means to make something holy or to treat it with deep respect and reverence. When you hallow something, you set it apart as sacred and special, worthy of honor.

The word appears in one of the most famous prayers in Christianity, the Lord's Prayer, which begins “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” This means treating God's name as holy and speaking it with reverence.

You might recognize “hallow” in the word Halloween, which is short for “All Hallows' Eve,” the evening before All Saints' Day (November 1st). “All Hallows” was an old way of saying “All Saints,” and saints are people the church has honored as especially holy.

The word carries a sense of something being consecrated or blessed, lifted above ordinary things. A hallowed hall might be a building where important, solemn events take place. When people speak of the hallowed halls of a famous university, they mean those places deserve respect because of their history and significance.

Hallowed ground is land made sacred by important events that happened there, like a battlefield where soldiers gave their lives. When Abraham Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg, he said the soldiers had already hallowed that ground through their sacrifice, beyond anything words could do.