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

Proper noun capitalized: Paw Paw

Paw Paw

  1. A village in Lee County, Illinois, United States.
  2. A ghost town in Miami County, Indiana, United States.
  3. An unincorporated community in Pike County, Kentucky, United States, named after the common pawpaw.
  4. A village, the county seat of Van Buren County, Michigan, United States. Named after the pawpaw trees which grew along the Paw Paw River.
  5. A ghost town in Sullivan County, Missouri, United States.
  6. A small town in Morgan County, West Virginia, United States, named after the pawpaw.

Noun capitalized: Paw Paw

Paw Paw (plural Paw Paws)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of paw paw (“pawpaw, grandfather”).
    • Dick protests, "She's a good kid," and maintains that he doesn't want to "get mixed up with her." Paw Paw answers, […]1987, Peter Griffin, Along with Youth: Hemingway, the Early Years, Oxford University Press, USA, →ISBN, page 28
    • Mommy suddenly said, “She has been saying that today, and I thought she was saying it so she wouldn't have to eat her lunch!” Calie looked at her Mommy. Then she looked at her Paw Paw.2011, Snookie Hodge, Sandbox Treasures: A New Home for Buzzy Bee, and Other Short Stories, AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 4

Forms of paw paw

pluralpaw paws
pluralPaw Paws

Questions about paw paw

What does paw paw mean?
Paw paw means a village in Lee County, Illinois, United States.
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 can be a proper noun or a noun.

Words near paw paw in the dictionary

  1. pavéing
  2. pavés
  3. paw
  4. paw at
  5. paw off
  6. paw paw
  7. Paw Paw French
  8. paw paws
  9. paw print
  10. paw prints
  11. paw up

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.