stews
stews is the plural of stew.
stews is the third-person singular simple present indicative of stew.
Meaning of stew
Noun
stew (usually uncountable, plural stews)
- A cooking-dish used for boiling; a cauldron.
- A heated bath-room or steam-room; also, a hot bath.
- And when he came to the chamber there as this lady was the dores of yron vnlocked and vnbolted / And so syr launcelot wente in to the chambre that was as hote as ony stewe / And there syr launcelot toke the fayrest lady by the hand / that euer he sawe / and she was naked as a nedel
And when he came...1485, Sir Thomas Malory, “primum”, in Le Morte Darthur, book XI
- And when he came to the chamber there as this lady was the dores of yron vnlocked and vnbolted / And so syr launcelot wente in to the chambre that was as hote as ony stewe / And there syr launcelot toke the fayrest lady by the hand / that euer he sawe / and she was naked as a nedel
- A brothel.
- [...] and the agrieved person shall doe more manly, to be extraordinary and singular in claiming the due right whereof he is frustrated, then to piece up his lost contentment by visiting the Stews, or stepping to his neighbours bed, which is the common shift in this mis-fortune, or els by suffering...1643, John Milton, Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce
- A prostitute.
- But it was so plotted betwixt the Lady, her Husband, and Bristol, that instead of that beauty, he had a notorious Stew sent him, and surely his carriage there was so lascivious...1650, Anthony Weldon, The Court and Character of King James I
- A dish cooked by stewing.
- I noticed then that there was nothing to drink on the table but brandy, and nothing to eat but salted herrings, and a hot, sickly, highly peppered stew.1870, Charles Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Wordsworth Classics, published 1998, page 367
- A pool in which fish are kept in preparation for eating.
- It was used as a stew, so that the inhabitants of the castle could have fish on Fridays, and for this reason the architects had been careful not to let the drains and sewers run into it. It was stocked with fish every year.1958, T[erence] H[anbury] White, chapter V, in The Once and Future King, New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam's Sons, →ISBN, book I (The Sword in the Stone)
- Synonyms:
- stewpond
Noun
stews
- A brothel.
- "They'd call my house a common stews and me a careless host, / "And—I would not anger my gentlemen for the sake of a shiftless ghost."1919, Rudyard Kipling, Tomlinson
Phrases with stews
- stews up
- beef stews
- hobo stews
- brown stews
- Irish stews
- Frogmore stews
- Karelian stews
- mulligan stews
- Brunswick stews
- perpetual stews
- stews in one's juices
- horse and rabbit stews
5 more phrasesFewer phrases
Questions about stews
- What does stews mean?
- Stews means a brothel.
- What is stews the plural of?
- Stews is the plural of stew.
- What part of speech is stews?
- Stews is a noun.
Words near stews in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: stews (page history and authors); stew (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: “stews.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stews. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.