Word.ws English Dictionary

sewel

sewel noun: a scarecrow, generally made of feathers tied to a string, hung up to prevent deer from breaking into a place.

Noun

sewel (plural sewels)

  1. A scarecrow, generally made of feathers tied to a string, hung up to prevent deer from breaking into a place.
    • Their sewels are made by tying a tassel of birch rind , formed like the wing of a paper kite , to the small end of a slight stick , about six feet in length. These sticks are pricked into the ground about ten or a dozen yards apart1768, John Cartwright, Remarks on the Situation of the Aborigines of Newfoundland …

Forms of sewel

pluralsewels
alternative formshewel

Origin of sewel

From Early Middle English sheueles (“scarecrow”) [and other forms]; probably from Old English *scīewels, from sċīen (“to be frightened or startled; to recoil in fear”) (from Proto-West Germanic *skiuhijan (“to dread; to avoid, shun”), from Proto-Germanic *skeuhaz (“frightened; bashful, coy, shy, timid; cautious, reserved”), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *skewbʰ-, *skūbʰ- (“to drive, move forward, push”) or *(s)kewH- (“to cover; to hide”)) + -els (suffix forming masculine nouns). Doublet of shy. Cognates * Middle English asheuelen, asheulen (verb) * Middle Low German schūwelse * Middle High German schiusel, schusel (modern German Scheusal (“beast; monster”)) * Old High German sciuhen (Middle High German schiuhen, schiuwen, German scheuen (“to scare”))

Phrases with sewel

Questions about sewel

What does sewel mean?
Sewel means a scarecrow, generally made of feathers tied to a string, hung up to prevent deer from breaking into a place.
What part of speech is sewel?
Sewel is a noun.
What is the plural of sewel?
The plural of sewel is sewels.

Words near sewel in the dictionary

  1. sewed
  2. sewed up
  3. sewedst
  4. Sewee
  5. Sewees
  6. sewel
  7. Sewel Convention
  8. Sewell
  9. sewellel
  10. sewellels
  11. sewels

Source and license

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