English edit

Noun edit

chawe (plural chawes)

  1. Obsolete spelling of chaw (jaw).
    • 1870, version of Edmund Spenser's [1590-1596] The Faerie Queene published by John Payne Collier in Illustrations of Early English Poetry, page 84:
      Between his cankred teeth a venemous tode, / That al the poyson ranne about his chawe: / But inwardly he chawed his owne mawe / At neighbours wealth, that made him ever sad; / For death it was when any good he sawe; / And wept, that cause of weeping none he had,
    • 2009, Nicola Whyte, Inhabiting the Landscape: Place, Custom and Memory, 1500-1800, page 91:
      [Quoting an earlier text:] John Doughty was so badly beaten about his head that 'some parte of his chawe bone afterwards rotted out', as a result, he was forced to keep to his house for eighteen weeks and 'was not able to goe about and follow his busines'. But this was by no means the end of the matter. Early in January []