cwtch
UK/kʊtʃ/
cwtch noun: a cubbyhole or similar hiding place.
Noun
cwtch (plural cwtches)
- A cubbyhole or similar hiding place.
- In front of the pavement again stretched a flat patch of rusty ground, a sort of little platform in the side of the hill where the sagging drying-lines stood and a chickens' cwtch built of orange-boxes.1944, Glyn Jones, “An Afternoon at Ewa Shad's”, in The Water-Music and Other Stories
- "In better times when the coalman called at our home in William Street he heaved the sacks through the front door and put their contents into the ‘cwtch’ under the stairs, a messy business indeed."2007 August 20, Mike Buckingham, Western Telegraph
- A hug or cuddle.
- I am expecting the big man to come round the corner and give me a ‘cwtch’ as he has done beside countless rugby fields.2007 November 18, Ieuan Evans, The Telegraph
- I don’t mind them coming in for a quick cwtch before trudging back off to their own rooms, as long as no conversation is required and it is literally just a five-minute cuddle.2011 February 17, Rachel Mainwaring, South Wales Echo
Verb
cwtch (third-person singular simple present cwtches, present participle cwtching, simple past and past participle cwtched)
- To hug, cuddle, embrace, or comfort.
- To crouch or lie (down).
- A family are about to have a meal round the kitchen table, so the dog is told to go and “cwtch” in the corner, out of harm’s way.2014, Alan Meats, “Toffee Dabs and Doughboys”, in Valley Boy Goes West: Memoirs of a Parish Priest, Guildford, Surrey: Grosvenor House Publishing Limited, →ISBN, pages 1–2
Synonyms of cwtch
Forms of cwtch
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | cwtches |
| alternative form | cwtsh |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | cwtches |
| present participle | cwtching |
| past participle | cwtched |
| past | cwtched |
Origin of cwtch
From Welsh cwtsh (“hug, cuddle; little corner, recess”), from Middle English couche. Doublet of couch.
From Welsh cwtsio, from cwtsh + -o (suffix forming verbnouns).
Words that rhyme with cwtch
Questions about cwtch
- What does cwtch mean?
- Cwtch means a cubbyhole or similar hiding place.
- What part of speech is cwtch?
- Cwtch can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce cwtch?
- Cwtch is pronounced /kʊtʃ/ (UK).
- What is the plural of cwtch?
- The plural of cwtch is cwtches.
Words near cwtch in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cwtch (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: “cwtch.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cwtch. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.