gnaw

English

Etymology

From Middle English gnawen, gnaȝen, from Old English gnagan, from Proto-West Germanic *gnagan, from Proto-Germanic *gnaganą (“to gnaw”), probably from Proto-Indo-European *gʰnēgʰ- (“to gnaw, scratch”).. Cognate with Dutch knagen, German nagen, Danish gnave (“to gnaw”), Norwegian Bokmål gnage, Norwegian Nynorsk gnaga, Swedish gnaga.

Pronunciation

  • (UK) enPR: nô, IPA(key): /nɔː/
  • Rhymes: -ɔː
  • (US) enPR: nô, IPA(key): /nɔ/
  • (cot–caught merger) enPR: nä, IPA(key): /nɑ/
  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Homophone: nor (non-rhotic)

Verb

gnaw (third-person singular simple present gnaws, present participle gnawing, simple past gnawed or (dialectal) gnew, past participle gnawed or (archaic) gnawn)

  1. (ambitransitive) To bite something persistently, especially something tough.
    The dog gnawed the bone until it broke in two.
  2. (intransitive) To produce excessive anxiety or worry.
    Her comment gnawed at me all day and I couldn't think about anything else.
  3. To corrode; to fret away; to waste.

Derived terms

Translations

Noun

gnaw (plural gnaws)

  1. the act of gnawing
    have a gnaw of a bone

Anagrams

Middle Welsh

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ɡnau̯/

Noun

gnaw

  1. soft mutation of knaw

Mutation

Mutated forms of knaw
radical soft nasal aspirate
knaw gnaw knaw / chnaw
pronounced with /ŋ̊-/		 chnaw

Note: Certain mutated forms of some words can never occur in standard Middle Welsh.
All possible mutated forms are displayed for convenience.

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.