Word.ws English Dictionary

paw-paw

paw-paw is the alternative form of pawpaw.

Meaning of pawpaw

Noun (1)

pawpaw (plural pawpaws)

  1. 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
  2. (Australia) Papaya (Carica papaya), a widely cultivated tropical fruit tree.
    Synonyms:
    papaya
  3. 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
  4. The fruit itself of such trees.

Noun (2)

pawpaw (plural pawpaws)

  1. (colloquial, dialectal) Grandfather.
    Synonyms:
    peepaw, pepaw

Noun capitalized: Paw-Paw

Paw-Paw (plural Paw-Paws)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of paw-paw (“pawpaw, grandfather”).

Forms of paw-paw

pluralpaw-paws
pluralPaw-Paws

Origin of paw-paw

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 paw-paw

What is paw-paw the alternative form of?
Paw-paw is the alternative form of pawpaw.
What part of speech is paw-paw?
Paw-paw is a noun.
What is the plural of paw-paw?
The plural of paw-paw is paw-paws.

Words near paw-paw in the dictionary

  1. Paw Paw French
  2. paw paws
  3. paw print
  4. paw prints
  5. paw up
  6. paw-paw
  7. paw-paws
  8. pawa
  9. Pawaka
  10. Pawala
  11. pawang

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: paw-paw (page history and authors); Paw-Paw (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: “paw-paw.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/paw-paw. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.