Adaw
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To daunt, overcome, subdue. obsolete, transitive
"He, comming home at undertime, there found / The fayrest creature, that he euer saw, / Sitting beside his mother on the ground; / The sight whereof did greatly him adaw."
- 2 To awaken, arouse. obsolete
"And hir awook, and thus to hir he cried, "Woman, what is that, that in thin hand I see? What hast thou doon, woman, for him that diede, What wickid spirit hath travaylid the?" And as sone as that adawed was she, The knyfe fel oute of hir hand in the bedde, And she bihilde the cloothis al forbledde, And the childe dead."
Example
More examples"He, comming home at undertime, there found / The fayrest creature, that he euer saw, / Sitting beside his mother on the ground; / The sight whereof did greatly him adaw."
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English adawen (“to terminate, defeat”), from adawe (“dead, nonexistent”), from a- (“of”) + dawe, dawen, Early Middle English dative plurals of day (“day”).
Inherited from Middle English adawen (“to dawn, arise, awaken”), from a- + dawen (“to dawn”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.