Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun obsolete, Scotland public house, tavern

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The story goes that the night was dark, and there stood at the door a hearse, which had that day conveyed to the "howf," now about to be shut up because of its offence against the nostrils of men who are not destined to need a grave, the wife of an inconsolable husband and the mother of children; and thereupon came from

    Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIII Alexander Leighton 1837

  • We maun to the Aultoun for the howf of that kind of cattle.

    Saint Ronan's Well 2008

  • Yediot Ahronot report said South Africa's production of the tank firing control systems was based on Israeli know-howf co-operation with Israel.

    ANC Daily News Briefing 1997

  • Those who frequented this howf, being generally elderly men, have now nearly all departed.

    The Book-Hunter A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author John Hill Burton

  • Old John Meine's shop was a great howf of Samuel Rutherford's all the time of his student life in Edinburgh.

    Samuel Rutherford Whyte, Alexander 1894

  • Old John Meine's shop was a great howf of Samuel Rutherford's all the time of his student life in Edinburgh.

    Samuel Rutherford and some of his correspondents Alexander Whyte 1878

  • But we confess that it is a little mortifying to our pride of time and place, to meet an old beggar-woman, who from the dust on her tattered brogues has evidently marched miles from her last night's wayside howf, and who holds out her withered palm for charity, at an hour when a cripple of fourscore might have been supposed sleeping on her pallet of straw.

    Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 John Wilson 1819

  • We maun to the Aultoun for the howf of that kind of cattle.

    St. Ronan's Well Walter Scott 1801

  • Yet they did say that the landlord of a rival inn was heard to remark that "the cauptain gaed ower aften to Lucky G---- 's howf.

    Stories of the Border Marches Jeanie Lang

  • "There's graves in yon howf, John, and hillocks o 'green,

    Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. Alexander Leighton 1837

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