faw

• IPA^(key): /fɔː/
• Rhymes: -ɔː
• Homophones: fough, faugh

Onomatopoeic.

faw

1. Alternative form of faugh.
   • 1972, John Gardner, The Sunlight Dialogues, page 36:

     "It's a complicated thing, though, isn't it." "Faw!" Churchill said.

   • 2013, John D. MacDonald, A Tan and Sandy Silence:

     “If you'd carry a camera around your neck and walk fifty feet ahead of me, nobody would know we were together.”
     “Faw,” he said. “And tush.”

Phonetic rendering of for.

faw

1. Pronunciation spelling of for, chiefly used to represent the accent of slaves in the United States.
   • 1907, George Washington Cable, Old Creole Days, Gutenberg eBook #10234:

     “ […] Now, Colossus, what air you a-beckonin′ at me faw?”

From the surname Faa.

faw (plural faws)

1. A gypsy.

• fee-faw-fum (etymologically unrelated)

• FWA, awf, WAF, WFA

Inherited from Middle English fallen, from Old English feallan (“to fall, fail, decay, die, attack”), from Proto-West Germanic *fallan (“to fall”), from Proto-Germanic *fallaną (“to fall”). Cognate with West Frisian falle (“to fall”), Low German fallen (“to fall”), Dutch vallen (“to fall”), German fallen (“to fall”), Danish falde (“to fall”), Norwegian Bokmål falle (“to fall”), Norwegian Nynorsk falla (“to fall”), Icelandic falla (“to fall”), Lithuanian pùlti (“to attack, rush”), Yiddish פֿאַלן (faln, “to fall”).

faw (third-person singular simple present faws, present participle fawin, simple past fell, past participle fawen)

1. to fall

• fall

Inherited from Middle English fal, fall, falle, from Old English feall, ġefeall (“a falling, fall”) and Old English fealle (“trap, snare”), from Proto-Germanic *fallą, *fallaz (“a fall, trap”). Cognate with Dutch val, German Fall (“fall”) and German Falle (“trap, snare”), Danish fald, Swedish fall, Icelandic fall, Yiddish פֿאַל (fal).

faw (plural faws)

1. fall (loss of greatness or status)
   • 2017 November 23, Rab Wilson, “Brexit bourach an the decline an faw o empire”, in The National‎^[1]:

     Like the Roman Empire, that eftir its faw saw centuries o ceevil war an unrest, we cuid e’en be in danger o revolution in the UK.

     Like the Roman Empire, which saw centuries of civil war and unrest after its fall, even we in the United Kingdom could be in danger of revolution.

Inherited from Middle English fawe, faȝe, from Old English fāg, fāh (“coloured; stained; dyed; tinged; shining; variegated”), from Proto-West Germanic *faih, from Proto-Germanic *faihaz (“coloured; motley”), from Proto-Indo-European *peyḱ- (“to mark, paint, colour”).

faw (comparative mair faw, superlative maist faw)

1. Of various colours; variegated.

• Eagle, Andy, editor (2025), “faw”, in The Online Scots Dictionary‎^[2]