Word.ws English Dictionary

callowest

callowest is the superlative form of callow.

Meaning of callow

Adjective

callow (comparative callower or more callow, superlative callowest or most callow)

  1. Immature, inexperienced, or naive.
    • Through both the volumes, there is not a single original sentiment, description, or incident, and yet a callow reader may peruse it without perceiving any thing is wanting.1764, A Society of GENTLEMEN, THE CRITICAL REVIEW or Annals of Literature, volume the Seventeenth, London, page 487
  2. Having no hair; bald, bare, hairless.
    • Then there was a little Chinese in full azure costume, with long gesticulating arms, and large callow head, who pertinaciously threw in his squeaky plea for Confucius in the most unsyntactical French.1878, A[lfred] Egmont Hake, “Professeurs de Langues”, in Paris Originals, London: C[harles] Egan Paul & Co., […], →OCLC, page 25
  3. Of a brick: unburnt.
  4. Of a young bird, or (part of) its body: having not developed feathers yet; featherless, unfledged; hence, of other animals or their bodies: having no fur or hair; furless, hairless, unfurred.
    • […] Calais and Zetes had no beard upon their chin, / They both were callow. But aſſone as haire did once begin / In likeneſſe of a yellow Downe upon their cheekes to ſprout, / Then (euen as comes to paſſe in Birdes) the feathers budded out / Togither on their pinyons too, and ſpreaded round about /...1567, Ovid, “The Sixt Booke”, in Arthur Golding, transl., The XV. Bookes of P. Ouidius Naso, Entytuled Metamorphosis, […], London: […] Willyam Seres […], →OCLC, folio 79, verso
    1. (figuratively) Lacking life experience; immature, inexperienced, naive; also, of or relating to something immature or inexperienced.
      • Those three young men are particularly callow youths.
  5. (broadly) In the life cycle of an animal: newly born or hatched; juvenile.
    • a callow bee

See all 17 meanings of callow

Questions about callowest

What is callowest the superlative form of?
Callowest is the superlative form of callow.

Words near callowest in the dictionary

  1. Callow Hill
  2. Calloway
  3. Calloway County
  4. Calloways
  5. callower
  6. callowest
  7. Callowhill
  8. callowly
  9. callowness
  10. callownesses
  11. callows

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: callowest (page history and authors); callow (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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Cite this entry: “callowest.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/callowest. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.