Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The mouth, stomach, jaws, or gullet of a voracious animal, especially a carnivore.
- n. The opening into something felt to be insatiable: "I saw the opening maw of hell” ( Herman Melville).
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The stomach: now used of human beings only in contempt, and rarely of animals.
- n. The crop or craw of a fowl.
- n. The sound or air-bladder of a fish.
- n. Stomach; appetite; inclination.
- A dialectal (Scotch) form of mow.
- n. A dialectal (Scotch) form of mew.
- n. An old game at cards, played with a piquet pack of thirty-six cards by any number of persons from two to six.
Wiktionary
- n. dialect, colloquial Mother.
- n. archaic the stomach, especially of an animal
- n. the upper digestive tract (where food enters the body), especially the mouth and jaws of a ravenous creature.
- n. any great, insatiable or perilous opening.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Zoöl.) A gull.
- n. A stomach; the receptacle into which food is taken by swallowing; in birds, the craw; -- now used only of the lower animals, exept humorously or in contempt.
- n. obsolete Appetite; inclination.
- n. An old game at cards.
WordNet 3.0
- n. informal terms for the mouth
Etymologies
- By shortening of mother (Wiktionary)
- Middle English mawe, from Old English maga. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“His maw was the only one heard him walk the floor nights, and after he found, out she could hear him he walked in his socks.”
“To do this is called maw-pak, and hence the game gets its name, maw-pak bae-ang.”
“To rebuke the seed is to forbid its growing. your -- literally, "for you"; that is, to your hurt. dung of ... solemn feasts -- The dung in the maw of the victims sacrificed on the feast days; the maw was the perquisite of the priests”
“Ah! that one has got hold of a tiny shrimp, and is tucking it into his hungry maw, which is just in the middle of its flower-like body.”
“Maw might be a bit archaic nowadays; in the Anglo-Saxon leechbooks "maw" seems to refer to the stomach more than the mouth, though I take it to mean the digestive tract from mouth to stomach.”
“First he transferred Eddie's ammunition to his own person, and such valuables and trinkets as he thought "maw" might be glad to have, then he removed the breechblock from”
“If a man wants to be famous, he had much better try the advertising doctor than the terrible editor, whose waste-basket is a maw which is as insatiable as the temporary stomach of Jack the”
“If a man wants to be famous, he had much better try the advertising doctor than the terrible editor, whose waste-basket is a maw which is as insatiable as the temporary stomach of Jack the Giant-killer.”
“Hmmm. Crystal would receive points (if a point system had been used in the judging) for her use of the word 'maw'.”
“My, but your maw is a woman to be proud of! "she said, hugging mother and patting her on the back.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘maw’.
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EN - archaic words
abide, abjure, abroad, adamant, afield, aforetime, aghast, anon, apace, argent, assuage, aught and 328 more...
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IMCO - EU nomenclature
includes words of the "Prodcom list"
abaca, abdominal, abrasive, absorbent, absorber, accelerator, accessory, account book, accumulator, acebutolol, acetaldehyde, acetamide and 4515 more...
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3-letter Scrabble Words
aah, aal, aas, aba, abo, abs, aby, ace, act, add, ado, ads and 995 more...
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3 Letter Words
A list of English words that are three letters long.
ace, act, ade, ado, add, ads, age, ago, ail, air, aim, all and 397 more...
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gross
corpuscle, globule, botched, botulism, pustulent, swampy, splenic, distended, turgid, maw, retch, spew and 13 more...
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mots justes
No true synonyms, no other word will do.
dysphemism, nyehre, conflate, onomatopœic, galumph, zeitgeist, mercenary, theomeny, git, snarky, sass, smarmy and 46 more...
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onomatopoeic
warble, quibble, quirk, drudgery, chortle, snicker, galumph, thwart, schlock, whimsy, garble, miffed and 25 more...
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kickassery
words that kick ass, in the non-literal sense
keraunophilia, vituperative, archnemesis, megafauna, Brontotherium, haruspex, vainglory, immanent, tarasque, aurochs, fraktur, photophore and 86 more...
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What's That Pokémon Name?
Words used to create the names of Pokémon, which are usually portmanteaux.
bulb, dinosaur, ivy, venus, char, salamander, squirt, turtle, blast, tortoise, water, caterpillar and 525 more...
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Words from Moby Dick
frigate, presumptuous, genteel, succor, hearthstone, gentry, factitious, bilious, insurgent, portent, enervate, genuflect and 303 more...
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i heart words
autarkic, cline, aver, limn, gossamer, ochre, fulminate, twee, augur, mollify, maw, ecumenical and 113 more...
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3LW
3 letter words, not the girl band.
boggle and speed scrabble would not be half as fun without them.aah, boa, dot, fun, ick, log, oca, pyx, sos, was, aal, bob and 342 more...
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colleen's words
yellow, green, pie, blue, fur, people, incense, book, brown, avuncular, mountain, fog and 1316 more...
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words I love to use
kerfuffle, smarmy, sketchy, grim, wheedle, piffle, prattle, loggerheads, snarky, piddling, nix, caterwaul and 90 more...
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lester
sargasso, monolithic, idioms, nascent, sonances, arrhythmic, pap, dilettantish, fuzztone, effete, morass, waxed and 92 more...
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Words I'd Like to Use Someday
thundersnow, phantasmagoria, mercurial, chimerical, taciturn, paraclete, lapis lazuli, flay, guttersnipe, wonky, misanthrope, kestrel and 583 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for maw.
dontcry *maw agape* Jun 8, 2009
bilby Penguins make the bravest dentists. Jun 8, 2009
madmouth bilby, how could you? Jun 8, 2009
bilby You'd probably like Gaping Maws then. Jun 8, 2009
chained_bear I like this word best when used with gaping, as a synonym for the opening through which food is taken in and vocalizations emerge. Otherwise known as piehole. Aug 26, 2008