maw
11
9.1
- noun
- /mɔ/
- Literature
:
fauces
- The bear opened its maw wide to catch the fish jumping out of the water.
- maw of hell
And thank you to this knuckleheaded heart, this Pelican heart, this gap tooth heart flinging open it's gaudy maw to the sky.
- And thank you to this knuckleheaded heart, this Pelican heart, this gap tooth heart flinging open it's gaudy maw to the sky.
- And thank you to this knuckleheaded heart, this Pelican heart, this gap toothed heart flinging open it's gaudy maw to the sky.
- So we go on, and we see the nice were not the the first people chewed up, and it's maw just the latest and cruelest extermination of many.
Examples
-
Viewed from the Federation space station, the starship approaches the open maw of the wormhole.
Academic text (1996) -
Its toothy maw snapped shut about a half inch from his nose.
Fiction book (1998) -
His mouth is the foul-smelling maw of hell."
-
I tried to see past them, into its maw to determine where that tentacle had come from.
Fiction book (2000) -
Janet wandered alone into the red maw that was the casino.
Fiction book (1993) -
But they ignore him and disappear into the darkness inside the gaping maw of Bones' building.
Fiction book (2001) -
Due to some creative accounting, a scant four million has been saved from Lady Liberty's gaping maw.
-
The garbage men dump the cans into its maw; it happily swallows the works, licks its lips, and belches.
Fiction book (1994) -
When it devoured its prey, that human seeming face unhinged into a maw with three rows of razor sharp teeth.
-
Imagine spiraling your way down to the furnaces of this hungry leviathan to join hundreds of men shoveling coal into the gaping maws of the boilers.
Synonyms
169
3.1
The place where a river enters the sea or a lake
15
8.8
The mouth used for talking or eating
2
9.9
The mouth of a person, used in a rude or joking way to tell them to be quiet
How Large
Surface Forms
Etymology
Maw comes from an old English word meaning 'stomach' or 'belly', so it originally named the hungry mouth of an animal. That's why we call any wide, greedy opening a maw — it feels like something that will 'eat' everything put into it.