Word.ws English Dictionary

aswail

aswail noun: the sloth bear (Melursus ursinus), an India bear.

Noun

aswail (plural not attested)

  1. (dated, no plural) The sloth bear (Melursus ursinus), an India bear.
    • An Aswail brought to me from the woods when quite young, and which lived some time in my possession, fed by choice almost exclusively upon roast mutton and fowl; rejecting all fruits and vegetables.1832, William Henry Sykes, A Catalogue of the Mammalia and Birds Observed in Dukhun
    • […] mutilated parts of an Aswail from Ceylon together with parts of a three-toed Sloth […]1953, Dirk Pieter Erdbrink, A Review of Fossil and Recent Bears of the Old World, volume 1

Origin of aswail

From Marathi अस्वल (asval) or a related term in another Indian language.

Questions about aswail

What does aswail mean?
Aswail means the sloth bear (Melursus ursinus), an India bear.
What part of speech is aswail?
Aswail is a noun.

Words near aswail in the dictionary

  1. ASW carrier
  2. ASW carriers
  3. Aswad
  4. aswaddumization
  5. aswagger
  6. aswail
  7. Aswan
  8. aswang
  9. aswangs
  10. Aswarby
  11. Aswarby and Swarby

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: aswail (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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