Word.ws English Dictionary

cowen

cowen is the obsolete spelling of cowan.

Meaning of cowan

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.

See all 14 meanings of cowan

Proper noun capitalized: Cowen

Cowen (plural Cowens)

  1. A surname.

Forms of cowen

Noun
pluralcowens
Proper noun
pluralCowens

Questions about cowen

What does cowen mean?
Cowen means a surname.
What is cowen the obsolete spelling of?
Cowen is the obsolete spelling of cowan.
What part of speech is cowen?
Cowen is a proper noun.

Words near cowen in the dictionary

  1. cowedness
  2. coween
  3. coweens
  4. Cowell
  5. Cowellian
  6. cowen
  7. cowens
  8. cower
  9. cowered
  10. cowerer
  11. cowerers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cowen (page history and authors); Cowen (page history and authors); cowan (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:

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