maw
/mɔː/US/mɔ/
maw noun: the upper digestive tract (where food enters the body), especially the mouth and jaws of an animal.
Noun (1)
maw (countable and uncountable, plural maws)
- The upper digestive tract (where food enters the body), especially the mouth and jaws of an animal.
- To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw1818, John Keats, “(please specify the page)”, in Endymion: A Poetic Romance, London: […] T[homas] Miller, […] for Taylor and Hessey, […], →OCLC
- “I saw the opening maw of hell, With endless pains and sorrows there; Which none but they that feel can tell— Oh, I was plunging to despair.1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 9, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC
- The mouth and jaws of a furry.
- […] / As you lift your shirt I'm closer / grab me by the maw into your arm- // […] / Sniff it with my maw I / […] / Smelling all of you its / […] / Getting me hard gimme more / […] / more more2025 February 14, Pent Up Puppy, “PITS”, in FURFAG, archived from the original on 23 Feb 2025
- The mouth.
- Shut your maw!
- She fumbled with her bag, and produced from its little maw a scented handkerchief.1920, Katherine Mansfield [pseudonym; Kathleen Mansfield Murry], “The Escape”, in Bliss and Other Stories, London: Constable & Company, published 1920, →OCLC, page 273
- Any large, insatiable or perilous opening.
- Adam requires a touch of feminine lace and a whisper of diaphanous silk, not a direct vision of the gaping maw of the human vulva.1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 23
- One two! I was born in a cross-fire hurricane. And I howled at the maw in the drivin' rain. But it's all right now, in fact, it's a gas. But it's all right. I'm Jumpin' Jack Flash. It's a gas, gas, gas.2011 October 11, “Jumping Jack Flash (Live 1973)” (track 14), in Brussels Affair (Live 1973), performed by The Rolling Stones
- Appetite; inclination.
- Unless you had more maw to do me good.1607 (first performance), Francis Beaumont, “The Knight of the Burning Pestle”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1679, →OCLC...
- The swim bladder of a fish, especially when used as food in Chinese cuisine.
- fish maw: The buoyancy bladder of a fish similar in appearance to the mammalian lung. The maw of the conger pike is used in Chinese cooking and is usually sold in dried form which needs reconstituting for about 3 hours and treating with[…]1998, Charles Gordon Sinclair, International Dictionary of Food and Cooking, Taylor & Francis, →ISBN, page 203
- Fish maw is the commercial term for the dried swim bladders of large fish like sturgeon. Fish maw has no fishy taste and absorbs the flavors of other ingredients.2009 April 28, Teresa M. Chen, A Tradition of Soup: Flavors from China's Pearl River Delta, North Atlantic Books, →ISBN, page 70
- The stomach, especially of an animal.
- So Death shall be deceav'd his glut, and with us two / Be forc'd to satisfie his Rav'nous Maw.1667, John Milton, “(please specify the page number)”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker...
Noun (2)
maw (plural maws)
- Mother.
Noun (3)
maw (plural maws)
- A gull.
- A person from a rural area of the Isle of Lewis, i.e. outwith Stornoway; a country bumpkin.
- Antonyms:
- townie
Noun (4) capitalized: MAW
MAW (plural MAWs)
- Initialism of model, actress, whatever: a young woman without much talent who attains celebrity through physical attractiveness
- Tamara was one of the original wild-child tribe - up to now, famous mainly for being famous. She has done a quantity of high-profile dabbling in modelling, acting, television and journalism (file under MAW - Model, Actress, Whatever - or WAIF - Why Am I Famous?)1996 October 19, Hester Lacey, “She's left her wild-child self behind, learned from her multitude of mistakes and even got a proper job. So why do we hate her?”, in The Independent
- Next to them, you spot what can only be a director's assistant. He's dressed very casually, jeans and a black T-shirt and he uses his tenuous connection to true Hollywood power to flirt with the most attractive MAWs (Model-Actress-Whatever) […]2001, Bill Robinson, Ceridwen Morris, It's All Your Fault: How To Make It as a Hollywood Assistant, page 33
Proper noun capitalized: Maw
Maw (plural Maws)
- A surname.
maw meaning in Tagalog
maw in Tagalog
- upper digestive tract
- butse
Examples of maw in a sentence
- Fish maw (swim bladder) is easily obtainable from your local fishmonger[.]2010 08, Eddie Dowd, Traditional Chinese Medicine and Fertility Treatment, Paragon Publishing, →ISBN, page 150:
- [...] fish maw is light, white in color, and has a spongy texture.2020 May 12, K. Gopakumar, Balagopal Gopakumar, Health Foods from Ocean Animals, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 172:
Synonyms of maw
Antonyms
Forms of maw
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | maws |
| plural | MAWs |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Maws |
Origin of maw
From Middle English mawe, maghe, maȝe, from Old English maga (“stomach; maw”), from Proto-West Germanic *magō, from Proto-Germanic *magô (“belly; stomach”), from Proto-Indo-European *mak-, *maks- (“bag, bellows, belly”). Cognates Cognate with West Frisian mage, Dutch maag (“stomach; belly”), German Low German Maag, German Magen (“stomach”), Danish mave, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish mage (“stomach; belly”), and also with Welsh megin (“bellows”), archaic Russian мошна́ (mošná, “pocket, bag”), Lithuanian mãkas (“purse”), Finnish maha (“stomach”), Estonian magu (“stomach”).
Variant of ma.
See mew (“a gull”), Norwegian måke (“a gull”)
Words formed from maw
Phrases with maw
Words that rhyme with maw
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about maw
- What does maw mean?
- Maw means the upper digestive tract (where food enters the body), especially the mouth and jaws of an animal.
- What is maw in Tagalog?
- Maw in Tagalog is butse. See Maw meaning in Tagalog.
- How do you use maw in a sentence?
- Fish maw (swim bladder) is easily obtainable from your local fishmonger[.]
- What part of speech is maw?
- Maw can be a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce maw?
- Maw is pronounced /mɔː/ (UK).
- What is the plural of maw?
- The plural of maw is maws.
Words near maw in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: maw (page history and authors); MAW (page history and authors); Maw (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-maw.wav.
Cite this entry: “maw.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/maw. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.