''maw'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''maw'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260320113731-00-⌔

maw - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

maw (countable and uncountable, plural maws)

• (archaic) The stomach, especially of an animal.
  • ✤ So Death shall be deceav’d his glut, and with us two/Be forc’d to satisfie his Rav’nous Maw.¹
• The upper digestive tract (where food enters the body), especially the mouth and jaws of a fearsome and ravenous creature; craw.
  • ✤ *To save poor lambkins from the eagle’s maw *²
  • ✤ “I saw the opening maw of hell, With endless pains and sorrows there; Which none but they that feel can tell— Oh, I was plunging to despair.³
• (slang, derogatory) The mouth.
  • ✤ Synonyms: trap, yap
  • ✤ Shut your maw!
  • ✤ She fumbled with her bag, and produced from its little maw a scented handkerchief.⁴
• Any large, insatiable or perilous opening.
  • ✤ Adam requires a touch of feminine lace and a whisper of diaphanous silk, not a direct vision of the gaping maw of the human vulva.⁵
  • ✤ One two! I was born in a cross-fire hurricane. And I howled at the maw in the drivin’rain. But it’s all right now, in fact, it’s a gas. But it’s all right. I’m Jumpin’Jack Flash. It’s a gas, gas, gas.⁶
• (obsolete, uncountable) Appetite; inclination.
  • ✤ Unless you had more maw to do me good.⁷
• The swim bladder of a fish, especially when used as food in Chinese cuisine.
  • ✤ fish maw: The buoyancy bladder of a fish similar in appearance to the mammalian lung. The maw of the conger pike is used in Chinese cooking and is usually sold in dried form which needs reconstituting for about 3 hours and treating with […]⁸
  • ✤ Fish maw is the commercial term for the dried swim bladders of large fish like sturgeon. Fish maw has no fishy taste and absorbs the flavors of other ingredients.⁹
  • ✤ Fish maw (swim bladder) is easily obtainable from your local fishmonger[.]¹⁰
  • ✤ […] fish maw is light, white in color, and has a spongy texture. Dried fish maw is tasteless which makes it a good complementary addition to many dishes since it can absorb the flavors of other ingredients when it is cooked with other food […]¹¹

Noun

maw (plural maws)

• (dialect, colloquial) Mother.

Noun

maw (plural maws)

• A gull.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /mɔː/
• (General American) IPA: /mɔ/
• (cot–caught merger) IPA: /mɑ/
• Homophones: MAW, more (non-rhotic accents)
• Rhymes: -ɔː
• Audio (Southern England): 🔊

Etymology 1

From Middle English mawe, maghe, maȝe, from Old English maga (“stomach; maw”), from Proto-West Germanic ﹡magō, from Proto-Germanic ﹡magô (“belly; stomach”), from Proto-Indo-European ﹡mak-, ﹡maks- (“bag, bellows, belly”).

Etymology 2

Variant of ma.

Etymology 3

See mew (“a gull”), Norwegian måke (“a gull”)

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

1. 1667, John Milton, “”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a] nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a] nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC: ↩

2. 1818, John Keats, “”, in Endymion: A Poetic Romance, London: […] T[homas] Miller, […] for Taylor and Hessey, […], →OCLC: ↩

3. 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 9, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC: ↩

4. 1920, Katherine Mansfield [pseudonym; Kathleen Mansfield Murry], “The Escape”, in Bliss and Other Stories, London: Constable & Company, published 1920, →OCLC, page 273: ↩

5. 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 23: ↩

6. 2011 October 11, “Jumping Jack Flash (Live 1973)” (track 14), in Brussels Affair (Live 1973) ‎${}^{[1]}$, performed by The Rolling Stones: ↩

7. 1607 (first performance), Francis Beaumont, “The Knight of the Burning Pestle”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1679, →OCLC, Act I, scene i: ↩

8. 1998, Charles Gordon Sinclair, International Dictionary of Food and Cooking, Taylor & Francis, →ISBN, page 203: ↩

9. 2009 April 28, Teresa M. Chen, A Tradition of Soup: Flavors from China’s Pearl River Delta, North Atlantic Books, →ISBN, page 70: ↩

10. 2010 08, Eddie Dowd, Traditional Chinese Medicine and Fertility Treatment, Paragon Publishing, →ISBN, page 150: ↩

11. 2020 May 12, K. Gopakumar, Balagopal Gopakumar, Health Foods from Ocean Animals, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 172: ↩

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