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Maw

//mɔ// name, noun, slang

Definitions

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A surname.
Noun
  1. 1
    The stomach, especially of an animal. archaic, countable, uncountable

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

  2. 2
    Mother. colloquial, dialectal
  3. 3
    A gull.
  4. 4
    Initialism of model, actress, whatever: a young woman without much talent who attains celebrity through physical attractiveness. abbreviation, alt-of, derogatory, informal, initialism

    "Tamara was one of the original wild-child tribe - up to now, famous mainly for being famous. She has done a quantity of high-profile dabbling in modelling, acting, television and journalism (file under MAW - Model, Actress, Whatever - or WAIF - Why Am I Famous?)"

  5. 5
    informal terms for the mouth wordnet
Show 5 more definitions
  1. 6
    The upper digestive tract (where food enters the body), especially the mouth and jaws of a fearsome and ravenous creature; craw. countable, uncountable

    "To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw"

  2. 7
    The mouth. countable, derogatory, slang, uncountable

    "Shut your maw!"

  3. 8
    Any large, insatiable or perilous opening. countable, uncountable

    "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."

  4. 9
    Appetite; inclination. obsolete, uncountable

    "Unless you had more maw to do me good."

  5. 10
    The swim bladder of a fish, especially when used as food in Chinese cuisine. countable, uncountable

    "fish maw: The buoyancy bladder of a fish similar in appearance to the mammalian lung. The maw of the conger pike is used in Chinese cooking and is usually sold in dried form which needs reconstituting for about 3 hours and treating with[…]"

Etymology

Etymology 1

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”). Cognates Cognate with West Frisian mage, Dutch maag (“stomach; belly”), German Low German Maag, German Magen (“stomach”), Danish mave, Norwegian mage (“stomach”), Swedish mage (“stomach; belly”), and also with Welsh megin (“bellows”), archaic Russian мошна́ (mošná, “pocket, bag”), Lithuanian mãkas (“purse”), Finnish maha (“stomach”), Estonian magu (“stomach”).

Etymology 2

By shortening of mother

Etymology 3

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

Etymology 4

* As an English surname, from an obsolete derivative of Proto-Germanic *makô (“mate, relative”), comparable to modern match. * Also as an English surname, from archaic mew (“seagull”); compare the surname Mew.

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