Word.ws English Dictionary

ow

/ˈaʊ/

ow interjection: synonym of ouch (“cry of pain”).

Interjection

  1. Synonym of ouch (“cry of pain”).
    Synonyms:
    ouch
  2. Used for emotional emphasis.
    • Now don't you wait or hesitate / Let's move before they raise the parking rate, ow!1970, Free, “All Right Now”
    • Then you ran into the bedroom / You were struck down / It was your doom, Annie / Ow!1987, Michael Jackson, “Smooth Criminal”

Noun

ow (plural ows)

  1. An uttering of an 'ow'.
    • Improvising a stretcher from a cupboard door, they levered Mrs Dibble on to it and got her upstairs to "Hoos!" and "Ows!" of anguish, and laid her on the bed, where Rita administered another stiff dose of gin.1950, Norman Lindsay, Dust or Polish?, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 98

Proper noun capitalized: OW

OW

  1. (abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of Open Water.
  2. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of Overwatch.

Examples of ow in a sentence

  • Ow! What did you do that for?
  • Yu 'ad a shrimp an' it choked yu praaperly. Yu was always a squeamy little feller. I can't never think 'ow yu managed in the war-time, makin' they shells.
  • OWS has contributed more to our politics than anything else in the last 40 years.

All 13 example sentences with ow

Synonyms of ow

Forms of ow

pluralows

Words formed from ow

Words that rhyme with ow

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about ow

What does ow mean?
Ow means synonym of ouch (“cry of pain”).
What part of speech is ow?
Ow can be an interjection, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce ow?
Ow is pronounced /ˈaʊ/.

Words near ow in the dictionary

  1. ovulos
  2. ovulum
  3. ovum
  4. OVV
  5. OVVs
  6. ow
  7. ow'st
  8. OWA
  9. Owa Raha
  10. Owain
  11. owambe

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ow (page history and authors); OW (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: en-us-ow.ogg.

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