Word.ws English Dictionary

mawns

mawns is the plural of mawn.

Meaning of mawn

Noun (1)

mawn (plural mawns)

  1. (Scotland, dialectal) A maund; a basket or hamper.
    • An apple-mill and press had been erected on the spot, to which some men were bringing fruit from divers points in mawn-baskets, while others were grinding them, and others wringing down the pomace, whose sweet juice gushed forth into tubs and pails.1887, Thomas Hardy, The Woodlanders, Harper & Brothers, page 173

Noun (2)

mawn

  1. Peat.
    • […] there lived, high up the breast of one of the loftiest mountains, in a hut among the black mawn-pits, - the world of human haunts in soundless depth below, above her only the cloud, the crag, the kite, - a melancholy woman[…]1837, The Tale Book: 1st Series, page 59

Noun (3)

mawn (plural mawns)

  1. A ghost.
    • None of the natives who had come in the boat would touch the body, or even go near it, saying, the mawn would come; that is literally, ‘the spirit of the deceased would seize them’.2006, Watkin Tench, A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson, University of Adelaide, archived from the original on 10 Oct 2010, page 7

Questions about mawns

What is mawns the plural of?
Mawns is the plural of mawn.

Words near mawns in the dictionary

  1. mawmish
  2. mawn
  3. mawnin'
  4. mawning
  5. mawnings
  6. mawns
  7. mawpuses
  8. Mawr
  9. maws
  10. mawseed
  11. mawseeds

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mawns (page history and authors); mawn (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.

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