mews

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“
'Oh, pussies, do be quiet--we can't hear ourselves think She had to shout this entreaty, for the mews were growing deafening, 'and it would take pounds' and pounds' worth of cat's-meat Let's ask the carpet to take them away,' said Robert.

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Definitions (5)

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  1. The royal stables in London, so called because built where the mews of the king's hawks were situated; hence, a place where carriage-horses are kept in large towns. The Mews at Charing-cross, Westminster, is so called from the word Mew, which in the falconer's language is the name of a place wherein the hawks are put at the moulting time, when they cast their feathers. The king's hawks were kept at this place as early as the year 1377, an. 1 Richard II.; but a. d. 1537, the 27th year of Henry VIII., it was converted into stables for that monarch's horses, and the hawks were removed. Strutt, Sports and Pastimes, p. 96. There was some disturbance last night in consequence of the mob assembling round the King's mews, where the rest of the battalion that had marched to Portsmouth still remained. Greville, Memoirs, June 16, 1820.
  2. [Used as a singular.] An alley or court in which stables or mews are situated: as, he lives up a mews. Mr. Turveydrop's great room … was built into a mews at the back. Dickens, Bleak House, xiv. The mews of London, indeed, constitute a world of their own. They are tenanted by one class—coachmen and grooms, with their wives and families—men who are devoted to one pursuit, the care of horses and carriages. Mayhew, London Labour and London Poor, II. 233.
  3. A dialectal form of moss. Halliwell. [Provincial English]

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Examples (50)

  • By making use of a mews, a furniture shop with a back entrance, and a passage kept open by ancient custom to give access to a no longer useful pump, Gerry reached the Lagonda parked where he and Richard had left it in something under two minutes. —  Tether's End (Hide My Eyes) - Margery Allingham - Campion 17: 1958
  • Most birds in the mews were her nestlings, but only the griffhawks were native to Markovy, coming from beyond the Iron Wood, where they lived off steppe antelope and straying cattle. —  F ;SF; - vol 102 issue 01 - January 2002
  • As for the mews, Ysandre sent her own Head Falconer to supervise the construction of it, and I must needs be resigned to a portion of my estate being given over to the manly pursuits of hunting and fishing. —  Kushiel’s Avatar
  • A housing development of fake English mews, then a housing development of fake French chateaux. —  EverywhereThatMaryWent
  • He paused for a moment, back against the door, to check that the mews was empty. —  A Mind to Murder-P D James-Dalgiesh 02
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Etymologies (1)

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  1. Formerly also mues; plural of mew, n., 4.
 

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