maw

• (UK) IPA^(key): /mɔː/
• (US) IPA^(key): /mɔ/
• (cot–caught merger) IPA^(key): /mɑ/
• Homophones: more (non-rhotic accents)
• Rhymes: -ɔː

• Audio (UK)

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From Middle English mawe, maghe, maȝe, from Old English maga (“stomach; maw”), from Proto-West Germanic *magō, from Proto-Germanic *magô (“belly; stomach”), from Proto-Indo-European *mak-, *maks- (“bag, bellows, belly”).

maw (plural maws)

1. (archaic) The stomach, especially of an animal.
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book X”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […], OCLC 228722708; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554:

     So Death shall be deceav'd his glut, and with us two / Be forc'd to satisfie his Rav'nous Maw.

2. The upper digestive tract (where food enters the body), especially the mouth and jaws of a fearsome and ravenous creature.
   • 1818, John Keats, “(please specify the page)”, in Endymion: A Poetic Romance, London: […] [T. Miller] for Taylor and Hessey, […], OCLC 1467112:

     To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw

   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 9, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, OCLC 57395299:

     “I saw the opening maw of hell, With endless pains and sorrows there; Which none but they that feel can tell— Oh, I was plunging to despair.

   • 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 23:

     Adam requires a touch of feminine lace and a whisper of diaphanous silk, not a direct vision of the gaping maw of the human vulva.

3. (slang, derogatory) The mouth.

   Synonyms: trap, yap

   Shut your maw!

   • 1920, Katherine Mansfield [pseudonym; Kathleen Mansfield Murry], “The Escape”, in Bliss and Other Stories, London: Constable & Company, published 1920, OCLC 561951956, page 273:

     She fumbled with her bag, and produced from its little maw a scented handkerchief.

4. Any large, insatiable or perilous opening.
   • 2011 October 11, “Jumping Jack Flash (Live 1973)”, in Brussels Affair (Live 1973)‎, performed by The Rolling Stones:

     One two! I was born in a cross-fire hurricane. And I howled at the maw in the drivin' rain. But it's all right now, in fact, it's a gas. But it's all right. I'm Jumpin' Jack Flash. It's a gas, gas, gas.

5. Appetite; inclination.
   • 1607 (first performance)​, Francis Beaumont, “The Knight of the Burning Pestle”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1679, OCLC 3083972, Act I, scene i:

     Unless you had more maw to do me good.

By shortening of mother

maw (plural maws)

1. (dialect, colloquial) Mother.

See mew (“a gull”), Norwegian måke (“a gull”)

maw (plural maws)

1. A gull.

• WMA, awm, mwa

maw

1. butterfly

• IPA^(key): /mæʊ/

maw m

1. boy

   Me a wrug desky Kernowak termyn me ve maw.

   I learnt Cornish when I was a boy.

• mab

maw (Unified spelling)

1. rain

maw

1. Alternative form of mawe (“stomach”)

From Proto-Cushitic *ma?-/*miʔ- (to be wet) from Proto-Afroasiatic *maʔ-. Compare Egyptian mw, Aasax maʔa, also Dahalo maʔa; Hebrew מים‎ (máyim),
Classical Syriac ܡܝܐ‎ (mayyā) and Somali maanyo and Somali ma'wi.

maw m (plural mawooyin m)

1. water container, water-jar

• Puglielli, Annarita; Mansuur, Cabdalla Cumar (2012), “ma'wi”, in Qaamuuska Af-Soomaliga, Rome: RomaTrE-Press, →ISBN, page 613