papaw
papaw is the alternative form of pawpaw.
Meaning of pawpaw
Noun (1)
pawpaw (plural pawpaws)
- Any member of the genus Asimina of trees and shrubs native to eastern North America, especially common pawpaw (Asimina triloba).
- Throughout the years it's gone by a lot of names—frost banana, Indiana banana, fetid-bush, bandango, custard apple, prairie banana, poor man's banana—but most of the time it's just been called pawpaw. At first glance, both the fruit and the tree seem out of place in North America.[2015, Andrew Moore, Pawpaw: In Search of America’s Forgotten Fruit, Chelsea Green Publishing, →ISBN, page 1
- Synonyms:
- custard apple, prairie banana, hillbilly mango
- Papaya (Carica papaya), a widely cultivated tropical fruit tree.
- Synonyms:
- papaya
- Mountain pawpaw (Vasconcellea pubescens), a fruit tree native to South America.
- Xavier sliced the pawpaw in half, emptying the tiny black seeds over the veranda wall.2021, Leone Ross, This One Sky Day, Faber & Faber Limited, page 254
- Synonyms:
- mountain pawpaw, mountain papaya
- The fruit itself of such trees.
Noun (2)
pawpaw (plural pawpaws)
Synonyms of papaw
Forms of papaw
| plural | papaws |
|---|
Origin of papaw
Via Portuguese and Spanish papaya from Lokono papáia; compare also Kari'na kapaja.
Related to papa, or pa(w) pa(w) (one’s father’s father).
Questions about papaw
- What is papaw the alternative form of?
- Papaw is the alternative form of pawpaw.
Words near papaw in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: papaw (page history and authors); pawpaw (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: “papaw.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/papaw. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.