Word.ws English Dictionary

cowan

Syllables: co·wan/ˈkaʊən/UK/ˈkəʊən/

cowan noun: a worker in unmortared stone; a stonemason who has not served an apprenticeship.

Noun (1)

cowan (plural cowans or (obsolete) cowanis)

  1. A worker in unmortared stone; a stonemason who has not served an apprenticeship.
  2. A person who attempts to pass himself off as a Freemason without having experienced the rituals or going through the degrees.
  3. (slang) A sneak; an inquisitive or prying person.
  4. (attributive) Uninitiated, outside, “profane”.

Noun (2)

cowan (plural cowans)

  1. (Scotland, obsolete, rare) A fishing-boat.

Proper noun capitalized: Cowan

Cowan

  1. A Scottish surname from Scottish Gaelic; an anglicization of mac Eoghainn (“son of Ewen”)
  2. A surname from Irish; an anglicization of mac Eógain (“son of Owen”)
  3. A Jewish surname from Hebrew; a variant of Cohen.
  4. An outer suburb of Sydney in Hornsby Shire, New South Wales, Australia. Apparently an anglicization of a Yuin-Kuric word meaning “big water”.
  5. A town in western Manitoba, Canada.
  6. A census-designated place in Stanislaus County, California.
  7. An unincorporated community in Monroe Township, Delaware County, Indiana.
  8. An unincorporated community in Buffalo Township, Union County, Pennsylvania.
  9. A city in Franklin County, Tennessee; named after Dr. James Benjamin Cowan, a Civil War-era doctor whose family had lived in the area since the early 1800s.

cowan meaning in Hindi, Punjabi and Gujarati

cowan in Hindi

कौवन

cowan in Punjabi

ਕੌਵਨ, ਕੌਵਾਨ

cowan in Gujarati

કોવન

Forms of cowan

Noun
pluralcowans
alternative formkowan
alternative formcowen
plural (obsolete)cowanis
Proper noun
alternative formCowans
alternative formCowin
alternative formCowing

Plural of cowan: cowans

Origin of cowan

First attested in 1598.

First attested in 1722; perhaps from the Scottish Gaelic cobhan (“coffer”, “box”, “ark”).

Words formed from cowan

Words that rhyme with cowan

Questions about cowan

What does cowan mean?
Cowan means a worker in unmortared stone; a stonemason who has not served an apprenticeship.
What is cowan in Hindi?
Cowan in Hindi is कौवन. See Cowan meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is cowan?
Cowan can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce cowan?
Cowan is pronounced /ˈkəʊən/ (UK).
What is the plural of cowan?
The plural of cowan is cowans.

Words near cowan in the dictionary

  1. cowage
  2. cowal
  3. cowalker
  4. cowalkers
  5. cowals
  6. cowan
  7. Cowan Bridge
  8. Cowangie
  9. cowanis
  10. cowans
  11. Cowanses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cowan (page history and authors); Cowan (page history and authors); cowan (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); cowan (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); cowan (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-cowan.ogg.

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