dew
/d͡ʒuː/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
Canada/dɪu̯/
dew noun: any moisture from the atmosphere condensed by cool bodies upon their surfaces.
Noun (1)
dew (countable and uncountable, plural dews)
- Any moisture from the atmosphere condensed by cool bodies upon their surfaces.
- Moisture in the air that settles on plants, etc in the morning or evening, resulting in drops.
- And Gideon said vnto God, If thou wilt saue Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said,
Beholde, I will put a fleece of wooll in the floore: and if the deaw be on the fleece onely, and it bee drie vpon all the earth beside, then shall I know that thou wilt saue Israel by my hande, as thou hast...1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Judges 6:36–40 - As therefore the morning devv, is a pavvne of the evenings fatneſſe, ſo, O Lord, let this daies comfort be the earneſt of to morrowes, […]1624, John Donne, “19. Prayer”, in Deuotions upon Emergent Occasions, and Seuerall Steps in My Sicknes: […], London: […] A[ugustine] M[atthews] for Thomas Iones, →OCLC, page 508
- Synonyms:
- rore
- And Gideon said vnto God, If thou wilt saue Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said,
- An instance of such moisture settling on plants, etc.
- There was a heavy dew this morning.
- On their entrance, Aylmer was greeted by a new surprise—his daughter Lucy, whom he very naturally supposed was quietly in her bed, lay on the window-seat, the casement open, and herself asleep; but the traces of tears were upon her cheek, and her long fair hair loose, and yet saturated with the...1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter X, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 72
- Anything that falls lightly and in a refreshing manner.
- the golden dew of sleepc. 1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Richard the Third: […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
- An emblem of morning, or fresh vigour.
- Thy people ſhalbe willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holineſſe from the wombe of the morning: thou haſt the dew of thy youth.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Psalms 110:3
- the dew of his youth1858 October 16, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Courtship of Miles Standish”, in The Courtship of Miles Standish, and Other Poems, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC
Verb
dew (third-person singular simple present dews, present participle dewing, simple past and past participle dewed)
- To wet with, or as if with, dew; to moisten.
- The grasses grew / A little ranker since they dewed them so.1887, Andrew B. Saxton, “Sunken Graves”, in The Century
- To deposit dew.
- The former [substances extremely attentuated, or in a filamentous and downly state] collect dew copiously, while the latter [solids] so rarely indicate its presence, even when it is dewing freely on contiguous substances, that some observers have doubted whether it ever happened, and have been...1831, The American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge for ..., page 80
- Yesterday she tied Kenneth to a tree and left him there for hours when it was dewing.1929, Cecily Sidgwick, Six of Them, page 118
Noun (2) capitalized: DEW
DEW (uncountable)
- Acronym of Distant Early Warning.
Noun (3) capitalized: DEW
DEW (plural DEWs)
- Initialism of directed-energy weapon.
Proper noun capitalized: Dew
Dew (countable and uncountable, plural Dews)
dew meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and Bengali
dew in Hindi
- moisture in the air that settles on plants, etc
- ओस os, शबनम śabnam, नम nam
dew in Marathi
- moisture in the air that settles on plants, etc
- दव dav
dew in Urdu
- moisture in the air that settles on plants, etc
- اوس os, شَبْنَم śabnam, نَم nam, ژالَہ źāla
dew in Bengali
- moisture in the air that settles on plants, etc
- শিশির śiśir, শবনম śobonom
More languagesFewer languages
- dew in Kannada
- ಇಬ್ಬನಿ
- dew in Punjabi
- ਤ੍ਰੇਲ trel, ਤਰੇਲ tarel
- dew in Gujarati
- ઝાકળ jhākaḷ
- dew in Odia
- କାକର kākara
- dew in Sanskrit
- अवश्या avaśyā, दानु dānu
- dew in Assamese
- নিয়ৰ nir
- dew in Pashto
- شبنم šabnám
- dew in Tagalog
- hamog
- dew in Arabic
- نَدَى nadā, طَلّ ṭall, سَقِيط saqīṭ
- dew in Malay
- embun, nyamur
- dew in Indonesian
- embun
- dew in Thai
- น้ำค้าง nám-káang
- dew in Vietnamese
- sương
- dew in Myanmar
- ဆီးနှင်း hci:hnang:
Examples of dew in a sentence
- Tree don't care what the little bird sings / We go down with the dew in the morning light / The tree don't know what the little bird brings / We go down with the dew in the morning2013, “We No Who U R”, in Warren Ellis, Nick Cave (lyrics), Push the Sky Away, performed by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds:
- Withdraw heat from a gas, and it will dew into a liquid.2017, Sam Kean, Caesar's Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us:
Synonyms of dew
Forms of dew
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | dews |
| plural | DEWs |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | dews |
| present participle | dewing |
| past participle | dewed |
| past | dewed |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Dews |
Origin of dew
From Middle English dew, from Old English dēaw (“dew”), from Proto-West Germanic *dauw, from Proto-Germanic *dawwaz, *dawwą (“dew, moisture”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰewh₂- (“smoke, haze”). Cognate with German Tau, Dutch dauw and Afrikaans dou. Doublet of dag.
From Middle English dewe, dewen, from Old English *dēawian, from Proto-West Germanic *dauwēn, from Proto-Germanic *dawwāną. Cognates include Saterland Frisian daue, German tauen and Dutch dauwen.
Words formed from dew
Phrases with dew
Questions about dew
- What does dew mean?
- Dew means any moisture from the atmosphere condensed by cool bodies upon their surfaces.
- What is dew in Hindi?
- Dew in Hindi is ओस (os), शबनम (śabnam), नम (nam). See Dew meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use dew in a sentence?
- Tree don't care what the little bird sings / We go down with the dew in the morning light / The tree don't know what the little bird brings / We go down with the dew in the morning
- What part of speech is dew?
- Dew can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce dew?
- Dew is pronounced /d͡ʒuː/.
- What is the plural of dew?
- The plural of dew is dews.
Words near dew in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dew (page history and authors); DEW (page history and authors); Dew (page history and authors); dew (Kannada, 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-us-dew.ogg, en-uk-dew.ogg.
Cite this entry: “dew.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dew. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.