chaw

US/t͡ʃɔ/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

cot caught merger/t͡ʃɑ/

chaw noun: that which is chewed. Also the obsolete form of cha.

Noun (1)

chaw (countable and uncountable, plural chaws)

(countable) That which is chewed.
(Appalachia, informal, uncountable) Chewing tobacco.
- When the doctor told him to quit smoking, Harvey switched to chaw, but then developed cancer of the mouth.
- "YOU give him a chaw, did you? So did your sister's cat's grandmother. You pay me back the chaws you've awready borry'd off'n me, Lafe Buckner, then I'll loan you one or two ton of it, and won't charge you no back intrust, nuther."1889, Mark Twain, chapter 21, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Verb

chaw (third-person singular simple present chaws, present participle chawing, simple past and past participle chawed)

(Southern US, archaic or nonstandard outside dialects) To chew; grind with one's teeth; to masticate (food, or the cud).
- The trampling steede, with gold and purple trapt,c. 1540, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Translations from the Æneid, Book 4, in The Poems of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1920, page 130
- And next to him malicious Envy rode,
  Upon a ravenous wolfe, and still did chaw
  Betweene his cankred teeth a venemous tode […]2006, Hackett (Indianapolis) edition of Edmund Spenser's [1590] “Book I, Canto IV” of The Faerie Queene, page 62
(obsolete, transitive) To ruminate (about) in thought; to ponder; to consider.
- "I home retourning, fraught with fowle despight,
  And chawing vengeaunce all the way I went,
  Soone as my loathed love appeard in sight,
  With wrathfull hand I slew her innocent;
(UK, slang) To steal.
- Some pikey's chawed my bike.
(dialectal, intransitive) To be sulky.

Noun (2)

chaw (plural chaws)

(obsolete) The jaw.
- all the poison ran about his chaw2006, Hackett (Indianapolis) edition of Edmund Spenser's [1590] “Book I, Canto IV” of The Faerie Queene, page 62

Also used as

chaw is also the obsolete form of cha.

Examples of chaw in a sentence

He […] went into the store and behind the counter and reached up and got the plug of chewing tobacco and unwrapped it and bit off a chaw.1970, Donald Harington, Lightning Bug:
Henry paused to see what kind of effect his words were having, but Red’s face was expressionless; all Henry could see was his jaw tensing rhythmically as he worked on his chaw.1991 August, Francis Roe, chapter 12, in Intensive Care, New York, N.Y.: Penguin Books, →ISBN, page 111:
[…] the king he set down and twisted his head to one side, and chawed his tongue, and scrawled off something […]1884, Mark Twain, chapter 29, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:
Beyond was the bed of pinks—white, clove, cinnamon. […] Anne's scissors chawed the wiry stems almost as sapless as the everlastings.1942, Emily Carr, “The Orange Lily”, in The Book of Small, Toronto, Ont.: Oxford University Press, →OCLC:

Forms of chaw

Noun
plural	chaws
Verb
third-person singular present	chaws
present participle	chawing
past participle	chawed
past	chawed

Origin of chaw

An unexplained variation of chewen (“to chew”). First attested in the sixteenth century. See chew for more. Cognate with Middle Dutch cauwen ("to chew"; whence Dutch kauwen), obsolete Dutch kauw (“the act of chewing, that which is chewed, chewed mass, wad of tobacco”), Middle Low German kauwen, kauen (“to chew”). Compare also Old English ġecow (“that which is chewed, food”) and *ġeċēaw (“chewing”), whence Middle English icheu (“gnawing, biting”).

From Early Modern English chawe, either a form of Middle English chaul, chavel, jawle, jawe (“jaw”) (whence also English jowl) which has lost the final -l, or from Middle English *chawe, *chowe, from Old English *ċēawe, *ċēowe (“jaw”), or a form of Middle English jowe, jawe (“jaw”). See jowl and jaw for more.

Words formed from chaw

Words that rhyme with chaw

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about chaw

What does chaw mean?: Chaw means that which is chewed.
How do you use chaw in a sentence?: He […] went into the store and behind the counter and reached up and got the plug of chewing tobacco and unwrapped it and bit off a chaw.
What part of speech is chaw?: Chaw can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce chaw?: Chaw is pronounced /t͡ʃɔ/ (US).
What is the plural of chaw?: The plural of chaw is chaws.

Words near chaw in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: chaw (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-chaw.wav.

Cite this entry: “chaw.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chaw. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.