Mawn

//mɔːn// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A maund; a basket or hamper. Scotland, dialectal

    "An apple-mill and press had been erected on the spot, to which some men were bringing fruit from divers points in mawn-baskets, while others were grinding them, and others wringing down the pomace, whose sweet juice gushed forth into tubs and pails."

  2. 2
    Peat.

    "[…] there lived, high up the breast of one of the loftiest mountains, in a hut among the black mawn-pits, - the world of human haunts in soundless depth below, above her only the cloud, the crag, the kite, - a melancholy woman[…]"

  3. 3
    A ghost.

    "None of the natives who had come in the boat would touch the body, or even go near it, saying, the mawn would come; that is literally, ‘the spirit of the deceased would seize them’."

Example

More examples

"An apple-mill and press had been erected on the spot, to which some men were bringing fruit from divers points in mawn-baskets, while others were grinding them, and others wringing down the pomace, whose sweet juice gushed forth into tubs and pails."

Etymology

Welsh mawn

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