chaw
verbEtymology An unexplained variation of chewen (“to chew”). First attested in the sixteenth century. See chew for more. Cognate with Middle Dutch cauwen ("to chew"; whence Dutch kauwen), obsolete Dutch kauw (“the act of chewing, that which is chewed, chewed mass, wad of tobacco”), Middle Low German kauwen, kauen (“to chew”). Compare also Old English ġecow (“that which is chewed, food”) and *ġeċēaw (“chewing”), whence Middle English icheu (“gnawing, biting”).
1
Southern US To chew; grind with one's teeth; to masticate (food, or the cud).
Archaic or nonstandard outside dialects
- The trampling steede, with gold and purple trapt,c. 1540, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Translations from the Æneid, Book 4, in The Poems of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1920, page 130
- And next to him malicious Envy rode, Upon a ravenous wolfe, and still did chaw Betweene his cankred teeth a venemous tode […]2006, Hackett (Indianapolis) edition of Edmund Spenser's [1590] “Book I, Canto IV” of The Faerie Queene, page 62
3 more examples
- The Man who laugh'd but once, to see an Ass Mumbling to make the cross-grained Thistles pass, Might laugh again, to see a Jury chaw The prickles of unpalatable Law.1682, John Dryden, The Medall. A Satyre against Sedition, lines 145–8:
- […] the king he set down and twisted his head to one side, and chawed his tongue, and scrawled off something […]1884, Mark Twain, chapter 29, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:
- Anne passed the lily. Beyond was the bed of pinks—white, clove, cinnamon. […] Anne's scissors chawed the wiry stems almost as sapless as the everlastings.1942, Emily Carr, “The Orange Lily”, in The Book of Small, Toronto, Ont.: Oxford University Press, →OCLC:
2
Obsolete To ruminate (about) in thought; to ponder; to consider.
- "I home retourning, fraught with fowle despight, And chawing vengeaunce all the way I went, Soone as my loathed love appeard in sight, With wrathfull hand I slew her innocent;
4
Dialectal To be sulky.