Word.ws English Dictionary

sewn

/səʊn//soʊn/

sewn is the past participle of sew.

Meaning of sew

Verb (1)

sew (third-person singular simple present sews, present participle sewing, simple past sewed, past participle sewn or sewed or (obsolete) sewen)

  1. (transitive) To use a needle to pass thread repeatedly through (pieces of fabric) in order to join them together.
    • I sewed a button on.
  2. (intransitive) To use a needle to pass thread repeatedly through pieces of fabric in order to join them together.
  3. (transitive) Followed by into: to enclose by sewing.
    • to sew money into a bag

Verb (2)

sew (third-person singular simple present sews, present participle sewing, simple past and past participle sewed)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To drain the water from.
    • Now geld with the gelder the ram and the bul, / sew ponds, amend dammes, and sel webster thy wul1573, Thomas Tusser, Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie, volume 8, page 40
  2. Of a ship, to be grounded.
    • The upward reaction of the keel blocks may be considered as a negative weight in a moment calculation, producing a decrease in the ship's stability, and it is most important that the vessel remains stable until she takes the blocks along the full length of her keel, i.e. when she is sewed, for...1962, Theory and Practice of Seamanship, page 236

See all 6 meanings of sew

Origin of sewn

Morphologically sew + -n.

Words formed from sewn

Phrases with sewn

Words that rhyme with sewn

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about sewn

What is sewn the past participle of?
Sewn is the past participle of sew.
How do you pronounce sewn?
Sewn is pronounced /səʊn/ (UK).

Words near sewn in the dictionary

  1. sewings
  2. sewins
  3. sewist
  4. sewists
  5. sewless
  6. sewn
  7. sewn up
  8. Sewri
  9. sewround
  10. sewrounds
  11. sews

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sewn (page history and authors); sew (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Pvanp7-sewn.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-sewn.wav.

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