mewとは

意味・読み方・使い方

語源 1

From Middle English mewe, mowe, meau, from 古期英語 mǣw, from Proto-Germanic *maihwaz, *maiwaz (“seagull”) (compare West Frisian meau, mieu, Dutch meeuw, German Möwe), from *maiwijaną (“to shout, mew”) (compare Middle English mawen (“to shout, mew”), Middle Dutch mauwen, Middle High German māwen); akin to Latvian maût (“to roar”), Old Church Slavonic мꙑꙗти (myjati, “to mew”).

名詞

mew (複数形 mews)

1. (archaic, poetic) A gull, seagull.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Qveene. […], London: Printed [by John Wolfe] for VVilliam Ponsonbie, OCLC 960102938, book II, canto XII:

     A daungerous and detestable place, / To which nor fish nor fowle did once approch, / But yelling Meawes, with Seagulles hoarse and bace […]

   • 1954, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring:

     From helm to sea they saw him leap, / As arrow from the string, / And dive into the water deep, / As mew upon the wing.

語源 2

From Middle English mewe, mue, mwe, from Anglo-Norman mue, muwe, and Middle French mue (“shedding feathers; cage for moulting birds; prison”), from muer (“to moult”).

名詞

mew (複数形 mews)

1. (obsolete) A prison, or other place of confinement.
2. (obsolete) A hiding place; a secret store or den.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Qveene. […], London: Printed [by John Wolfe] for VVilliam Ponsonbie, OCLC 960102938, book II, canto VII:

     Ne toung did tell, ne hand these handled not, / But safe I haue them kept in secret mew, / From heauens sight, and powre of all which them pursew.

3. (obsolete) A breeding-cage for birds.
4. (falconry) A cage for hawks, especially while moulting.
   • 1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd corrected and augmented edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, OCLC 54573970:

     , vol.I, New York, 2001, p.243:

     A horse in a stable that never travels, a hawk in a mew that seldom flies, are both subject to diseases; which, left unto themselves, are most free from any such encumbrances.

5. (falconry, in the plural) A building or set of buildings where moulting birds are kept.

動詞

mew (三人称単数 現在形 mews, 現在分詞 mewing, 過去形および過去分詞形 mewed)

1. (archaic) To shut away, confine, lock up.
   • c. 1592, William Shakespeare, Richard III, Act I, Scene 1,^[2]

     More pity that the eagle should be mew’d,

     While kites and buzzards prey at liberty.

   • c. 1596, John Donne, “Elegie XX: Loves Warre,” in Charles M. Coffin (ed.), The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne, New York: Modern Library, p. 84,^[3]

     To mew me in a Ship, is to inthrall

     Mee in a prison, that weare like to fall;

   • 1693, John Dryden (translator), The Satires of Juvenal, London: Jacob Tonson, Satire 1, p. 10,^[4]

     […] Nay some have learn’d the trick

     To beg for absent persons; feign them sick,

     Close mew’d in their Sedans, for fear of air:

   • 1748, Tobias Smollett, chapter 50, in The Adventures of Roderick Random.:

     When it came to his turn to mention Sir John Sparkle, he represented him as a man of an immense estate and narrow disposition, who mewed up his only child, a fine young lady, from the conversation of mankind, under the strict watch and inspection of an old governante, who was either so honest, envious, or insatiable, that nobody had been as yet able to make her a friend, or get access to her charge, though numbers attempted it every day […]

   • 1928, Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography, Penguin, 1942, Chapter 5, p. 163,^[5]

     […] it was all very well for Orlando to mew herself in her house at Blackfriars and pretend that the climate was the same […]

2. (of a bird) To moult.

   The hawk mewed his feathers.

   • 1700, John Dryden, Fables Ancient and Modern, London: Jacob Tonson, “Cinyras and Myrrha, Out of the Tenth Book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses,” p. 184,^[6]

     Nine times the moon had mewed her horns […]

3. (of a bird, obsolete) To cause to moult.
4. (of a deer, obsolete) To shed antlers.

語源 3

Onomatopoeic.

名詞

mew (複数形 mews)

1. The crying sound of a cat; a meow, especially of a kitten.
2. The crying sound of a gull.
3. (obsolete) An exclamation of disapproval; a boo.

動詞

mew (三人称単数 現在形 mews, 現在分詞 mewing, 過去形および過去分詞形 mewed)

1. (of a cat, especially of a kitten) To meow.

間投詞

mew

1. A cat's (especially a kitten's) cry.
2. A gull's cry.
3. (archaic) An exclamation of disapproval; boo.

語源 4

Named after British orthodontists John Mew and his son Michael Mew.^[1]

動詞

mew (三人称単数 現在形 mews, 現在分詞 mewing, 過去形および過去分詞形 mewed)

1. (slang, neologism) To flatten the tongue against the roof of the mouth for supposed health benefits.

参照

アナグラム

• MWE, Wem, wem