maw

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

From Middle English mawe, maghe, maȝe, from Old English maga (“stomach; maw”), from Proto-Germanic *magô (“belly; stomach”), from Proto-Indo-European *mak-, *maks- (“bag, bellows, belly”). Cognate with West Frisian mage, Dutch maag (“stomach; belly”), German Low German Maag, German Magen (“stomach”), Danish mave, Swedish mage (“stomach; belly”), and also with Welsh megin (“bellows”), archaic Russian мошна́ (mošná, “pocket, bag”), Lithuanian mãkas (“purse”).

maw (plural maws)

1. (archaic) The stomach, especially of an animal.
   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book X:

     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, Endymion:

     To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw

3. Any large, insatiable or perilous opening.
4. Appetite; inclination.
   • Beaumont and Fletcher:

     Unless you had more maw to do me good.

By shortening of mother

maw (plural maws)

1. (dialectal, colloquial) Mother.

See mew (“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 (using Unified Alphabet)

1. rain

maw

1. Alternative form of mawe (“stomach”)