• (RP) IPA: /mjuː/
• (GA) IPA: /mju/

mew (plural 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.

• French: mouette, goéland
• German: Möwe
• Portuguese: gaivota
• Russian: ча́йка

mew (plural 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 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.

mew (mews, present participle mewing; past and past participle mewed)

1. (archaic) To shut away, confine, lock up.
   • circa 1592 William Shakespeare, Richard III (play), Act I, Scene 1,

     More pity that the eagle should be mew’d,

     While kites and buzzards prey at liberty.

   • circa 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,

     To mew me in a Ship, is to inthrall

     Mee in a prison, that weare like to fall;

   • 1693, John Dryden (translator), The Satires (Juvenal) of Decimus Junius Juvenalis, London: Jacob Tonson, Satire 1, p. 10,

     […] 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:

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

     […] 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,

     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.

mew (plural 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.

mew (mews, present participle mewing; past and past participle mewed)

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

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

mew (mews, present participle mewing; past and past participle mewed)

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

• IPA: /mjuː/

1. Surname

   Darren James Mew