What is a synonym for "chow"?

Common synonyms include: belly-timber, bread, chii, chii, chou, chou dynasty.

Chow

//t͡ʃaʊ// name, noun, verb, slang

name, noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level

Noun

1
Food, especially snacks. slang, uncountable, usually
"I'm going to pick up some chow for dinner."
2
A prefecture or district of the second rank in China, or the chief city of such a district.
3
A run of three consecutive tiles of the same suit.
4
A Chow Chow (Chinese breed of dog).
"Colin was a Chow; an interesting Chinese breed that looks a bit like a Pomeranian on steroids[.]"
5
breed of medium-sized dogs with a thick coat and fluffy curled tails and distinctive blue-black tongues; believed to have originated in northern China wordnet

Show 6 more definitions

6
Unripe, or partially ripened, fruit seasoned and served as a dish, e.g. pineapple chow or mango chow. Trinidad-and-Tobago, uncountable, usually
7
A call for forming such a run using a discarded tile.
8
informal terms for a meal wordnet
9
A Chow Chow. uncountable, usually
"‘I'd try and grapple with him myself, only I've got my chow in my room, you know, and he goes for pigs wherever he finds them.’"
10
the imperial dynasty of China from 1122 to 221 BC; notable for the rise of Confucianism and Taoism wordnet
11
A Chinese person. Australia, archaic, slang, uncountable, usually
"These were the creatures Nawnim had been amazed to see about him on the day of his arrival. When he inquired about them, Anna told him they were Japs an' Chows."

Verb

1
To eat. South-Africa, slang
2
To call a discarded tile to produce a chow.
"[…] while the adversary on his right will repeatedly bury in the discard the very tiles he wishes to chow but can't."

Proper Noun

1
A surname from Cantonese.
2
Alternative form of Zhou (“dynasty, realm, and era”). alt-of, alternative, obsolete

"As for me, I don't eat meat, so I ordered veg chow mein."

Etymology 1

Shortened from chow-chow, from Chinese Pidgin English chow-chow. Compare Macanese chau-cháu. See also English chow fun, chow mein, etc.

Etymology 2

Borrowed from Chinese 州 (zhōu).

Etymology 3

Phono-semantic matching of Chinese 吃 (chī, literally “to eat”), influenced by the “food” sense of Etymology 1 above.

Etymology 4

From Cantonese 周 (zau¹).

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.