Word.ws English Dictionary

pooquaw

pooquaw noun: hard-shelled clam.

Noun

pooquaw (plural pooquaws)

  1. (US, Nantucket dialect) Hard-shelled clam.
    • 'Pooquaws,' says he, 'I'm hunting for pooquaws for a shearing pie, but they seems to be so scarce I guess I'll go off and drive up my sheep.'1881, Harriet B. Worron, "Trustum" and his grandchildren, page 89
    • "And a mess o' pooquaws in case your auntie fancies a bit o' fish. Is she any better today?"1999, Joan Aiken, Nightbirds on Nantucket

Forms of pooquaw

pluralpooquaws

Origin of pooquaw

Shortening of the earlier spelling pequaock, from Narragansett poquauhock.

Questions about pooquaw

What does pooquaw mean?
Pooquaw means hard-shelled clam.
What part of speech is pooquaw?
Pooquaw is a noun.
What is the plural of pooquaw?
The plural of pooquaw is pooquaws.

Words near pooquaw in the dictionary

  1. poopyface
  2. poopyfaces
  3. poopyhead
  4. poopyheads
  5. poopypants
  6. pooquaw
  7. pooquaws
  8. poor
  9. poor as a barber's cat
  10. poor as a church mouse
  11. poor as a rat

Source and license

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