Word.ws English Dictionary

raw

/ɹɔː(ɹ)/UK/ɹɔː/

raw adjective: (of food) Not cooked.

raw: (of food) Not cooked
Image: CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Adjective

raw (comparative rawer, superlative rawest)

  1. (of food) Not cooked.
    • There's nothing but raw fish in the freezer.
    • He ate raw beef for dinner.
    1. Subsisting on, or pertaining to, a diet of raw food.
      • I was 100% raw from 2014 until early 2018.
  2. Not treated or processed; in a natural state, unrefined, unprocessed. (of materials, products, etc.)
    • Volatiles of kecap manis and its raw materials were extracted using Likens-Nickerson apparatus with diethyl ether as the extraction solvent. The extracts were then dried with anhydrous sodium sulfate, concentrated using a rotary evaporator followed by flushing using nitrogen until the volume was...1997, A. J. Taylor, D. S. Mothram, editors, Flavour Science: Recent Developments, Elsevier, →ISBN, page 63
    • raw cane sugar
  3. Having had the skin removed or abraded; chafed, tender; exposed, lacerated.
    • ‘Children crawled over each other like little grey worms in the gutters,’ he said. ‘The only red things about them were their buttocks and they were raw. Their faces looked as if snails had slimed on them and their mothers were like great sick beasts whose byres had never been cleared.[…]’1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 7, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC
    • a raw wound
  4. New or inexperienced.
    • a raw beginner
  5. Crude in quality; rough, uneven, unsophisticated.
    • a raw voice
  6. Uncorrected, without analysis.
    • What makes Mexico worrying is not just the raw numbers but the power of the cartels over society.2010, "Under the volcano", The Economist, 16 Oct 2010
  7. Unpleasantly cold or damp. (of weather)
    • a raw wind
    • a raw and gusty day1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
  8. Unmasked, undisguised, strongly expressed. (of an emotion, personality, etc.)
    • raw emotion
  9. Candid in a representation of unpleasant facts, conditions, etc.
    • a raw description of the American political arena
  10. Unrefined, crude, or insensitive, especially with reference to sexual matters. (of language)
  11. (slang) Without a condom.
    • raw sex
  12. (obsolete) Not covered; bare; bald.
    • with scull all raw1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 11

Adverb

raw

  1. (slang) Without a condom.
    • We did it raw.
    • You know what I be on, I'm about to go raw2020, “What You Know Bout Love”, performed by Pop Smoke
    Synonyms:
    condomless

Noun (1)

raw (plural raws)

  1. (sugar refining, sugar trade) An unprocessed sugar; a batch of such.
    • With the recent advance in London yellow crystals, however, the disproportion of the relative value of these two kinds has been considerably reduced, and a better demand for crystallized raws should consequently occur.1800, Louisiana Sugar Planters' Association, Lousiana Sugar Chemists' Association, American Cane Growers' Association, The Louisiana Planter and Sugar Manufacturer, volume 22, page 287
    • Early in the year the raws were melted to about 20 Brix in order to facilitate filtration.1921, “The Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry”, in American Chemical Society, Volume 13, Part 1, page 149
  2. A galled place; an inveterate sore.
  3. (broadly, figuratively) A point about which a person is particularly sensitive.
    • In a moment Tom was angry. The women saw that Bill had touched him upon the raw, and they went out of the room to prepare a meal.1934, Harold Heslop, Goaf, page 29
  4. (slang, uncountable) Unadulterated narcotics, especially crack cocaine
    • The year is '94, in my trunk is raw2004, “99 Problems”, in The Black Album, performed by Jay-Z
  5. (slang) A recording or rip of a show that has not been fansubbed.
  6. (slang) A scan that has not been cleaned (purged of blemishes arising from the scanning process) and has not been scanlated.

Verb

raw (third-person singular simple present raws, present participle rawing, simple past and past participle rawed)

  1. (slang, transitive) To sexually penetrate without a condom.

Proper noun (1) capitalized: RAW

RAW

  1. (India, abbreviation, acronym, initialism) Initialism of Research and Analysis Wing.
    • RAW is a well-known acronym in India for an organization whose detailed character and activities are not well-known. RAW stands for the Research and Analysis Wing either of India's prime minister's department or the cabinet's secretariat, which was established in 1968 to handle internal...[2008, Peter Lyon, Conflict Between India and Pakistan: An Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, →ISBN, page 140
    Synonyms:
    R&AW

Noun (2) capitalized: RAW

RAW (uncountable)

  1. (abbreviation) Abbreviation of rules as written: the actual rules appearing in the rulebook, as opposed to house rules, or to rules that might have been intended (in the event of a mistake in the rulebook).
  2. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of read after write, a kind of data hazard.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Raw

Raw (plural Raws)

  1. A surname from Old English.

raw meaning in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Telugu

raw in Hindi

uncooked
कच्चा kaccā
untreated
कच्चा kaccā
without a condom
नंगा naṅgā, निरोधहीन nirodh-hīn

raw in Urdu

uncooked
کچا kaccā

raw in Bengali

uncooked
কাঁচা kãca

raw in Telugu

uncooked
పచ్చి pacci
untreated
ముడి muḍi
More languagesFewer languages
raw in Malayalam
പച്ച pacca
raw in Punjabi
ਕੱਚਾ kaccā
raw in Sanskrit
आम āma
raw in Assamese
কেঁচা kẽsa
raw in Nepali
काँचो kā̃co
raw in Pashto
اوم um
raw in Arabic
نَيْء nayʔ, خَام ḵām
raw in Malay
mentah
raw in Indonesian
mentah
raw in Persian
خام xâm
raw in Thai
ดิบ dìp
raw in Vietnamese
sống
raw in Myanmar
စိမ်း cim:

Examples of raw in a sentence

  • A flying fish is excellent to eat raw and I would not have to cut him up.1952 September 1, Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, page 66:
  • Volatiles of kecap manis and its raw materials were extracted using Likens-Nickerson apparatus with diethyl ether as the extraction solvent.1997, A. J. Taylor, D. S. Mothram, editors, Flavour Science: Recent Developments, Elsevier, →ISBN, page 63:
  • […] I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, […]1847 October 16, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter I, in Jane Eyre. […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […]...
  • London raws sold at 8s. 4½d., and futures there were unchanged to 3d. higher.1939, The Commercial and Financial Chronicle, Volume 148, Part 2, page 2924:

All 40 example sentences with raw

Synonyms of raw

4 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of raw

Forms of raw

Adjective
comparativerawer
superlativerawest
Noun
pluralraws
Verb
third-person singular presentraws
present participlerawing
past participlerawed
pastrawed
Proper noun
alternative formR.A.W.
alternative formR. A. W.
pluralRaws

Origin of raw

From Middle English rawe, raw, rau, from Old English hrēaw (“raw, uncooked”), from Proto-West Germanic *hrau, from Proto-Germanic *hrawaz, *hrēwaz (“raw”), from Proto-Indo-European *krewh₂- (“raw meat, fresh blood”). Cognate with Scots raw (“raw”), Dutch rauw (“raw”), German roh (“raw”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish rå (“raw”), Faroese ráur (“raw”), Icelandic hrár (“raw”), Latin crūdus (“raw, bloody, uncooked”), Irish cró (“blood”), Lithuanian kraujas (“blood”), Russian кровь (krovʹ, “blood”). Related also to Old English hrēow, hrēoh (“rough, fierce, wild, angry, disturbed, troubled, sad, stormy, tempestuous”). More at ree. Doublet of crude.

Topographic surname for someone who lived at a hedgerow or at a row of houses, from Old English rāw (“row”).

Words formed from raw

Phrases with raw

1 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with raw

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about raw

What does raw mean?
Raw means (of food) Not cooked.
What is raw in Hindi?
Raw in Hindi is कच्चा (kaccā), नंगा (naṅgā), निरोधहीन (nirodh-hīn). See Raw meaning in Hindi.
How do you use raw in a sentence?
A flying fish is excellent to eat raw and I would not have to cut him up.
What part of speech is raw?
Raw can be an adjective, an adverb, a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce raw?
Raw is pronounced /ɹɔː/ (UK).

Words near raw in the dictionary

  1. ravonal
  2. ravs
  3. ravuconazole
  4. Ravula
  5. ravulizumab
  6. raw
  7. raw back
  8. raw bar
  9. raw bars
  10. raw data
  11. raw deal

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: raw (page history and authors); RAW (page history and authors); Raw (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-raw.ogg.

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