chaw

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“
He offered me a chaw, absent-minded.

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Definitions (14)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. intransitive and transitive verb To chew.
  2. noun A chew, especially of tobacco.
  3. Regional Note
    Chaw has a wide range of senses in regional expressions. One Northern and Western meaning of the verb is "to bawl someone out”: He chawed her good. A Southern sense is "to get the best of someone in a bantering contest” or simply "to embarrass”: "That compliment sort of chawed me” (Publication of the American Dialect Society). The noun chaw can mean "a twist of chewing tobacco” or "an attachment or hold (on someone)”; for example, a flirtatious woman in Tennessee is "tryin' to git a chaw on a feller” (Dialect Notes).

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (7)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (2)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (2)

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Examples (50)

  • They arrived; and first asking me for a chaw of tobacco, the negro delivered the note, which, true to my surmise, was from the Major, and written apparently under high excitement, requesting me to come up immediately, as he apprehended something terrible had either happened, or was going to occur. —  The Swamp Doctor's Adventures
  • She chaw en chaw, en study en study. —  Nights With Uncle Remus
  • He offered me a chaw, absent-minded No," says I; "I can't take no chaw of tobacco with such as you He put it back in his pocket, then, and didn't take none his own self. —  The Man Next Door
  • Didn't I say I'd give you as much baccy as ye could chaw or smoke an ye'd only kape out o' this place? —  Under the Waves Diving in Deep Waters
  • Upon this occasion the "chaw" created such a disturbance that (on audacious demand) leave was granted to the Duffer and John to capture the offender. —  The Hill A Romance of Friendship
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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

rappee ·  adultus ·  statuere ·  rost ·  chechnya ·  blase ·  chicken-fried ·  jihadi
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (4)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Variant of chew.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (3)

  1. A variant of chew, q. v.
  2. from chaw, v.
  3. Early modern English, also chawe; now jaw, q. v.
 

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/tʃɔ/
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