shaw

• shawe (13th-17th centuries)

Old English sceaga, scaga. Cognate with Old Norse skógr (“forest, wood”), whence Danish skov (“forest”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ʃɔː/

shaw (plural shaws)

1. (dated) A thicket; a small wood or grove.
   • 1485, Sir Thomas Malory, chapter xxxix, in Le Morte Darthur, book IX:

     Thenne said sire kay I requyre you lete vs preue this aduenture / I shal not fayle you said sir Gaherys / and soo they rode that tyme tyl a lake / that was that tyme called the peryllous lake / And there they abode vnder the shawe of the wood

   • 1936, Alfred Edward Housman, More Poems, V, lines 1-2

     The snows are fled away, leaves on the shaws, / And grasses in the mead renew their birth,

2. (Scotland) The leaves and tops of vegetables, especially potatoes and turnips.
   • 1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song, Polygon, 2006 (A Scots Quair), p.35:

     Up here the hills were brave with the beauty and the heat of it, but the hayfield was still all a crackling dryness and in the potato park beyond the biggings the shaws drooped red and rusty already.

• -wash, WASH, Wahs, Wash, Wash., haws, shwa, wahs, wash

From Middle English schewen, schawen, scheawen, from Old English scēawian, from Proto-Germanic *skawwōną, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kewh₁-.

shaw (plural shaws)

1. A show.

shaw (third-person singular present shaws, present participle shawin, past shawt, past participle shawt)

1. To show.