callow
Synonym of teneral and so lacks colour or firmness”)Synonym of teneral (“an insect or other arthropod such as a spider which has just undergone ecdysis (“shedding of the exoskeleton”) and so lacks colour or firmness”).
» The callow recruits wished they were home.
mccarras · Tatoeba · CC BY 2.0 FRMeaning
7 senses(countable, uncountable)Synonym of teneral (“an insect or other arthropod such as a spider which has just undergone ecdysis (“shedding of the exoskeleton”) and so lacks colour or firmness”).
(countable, uncountable)An alluvial flat.
(Ireland)A low-lying meadow near a river which is regularly submerged.
Near-synonyms: bog, fen, marsh, swamp, mire, moor, slough
(UK, archaic, countable, regional, uncountable)The upper layer of rubble in a quarry which has to be removed to reach the material to be mined.
(countable, obsolete, uncountable)A young bird which has not developed feathers yet; a nestling.
A young bird which has not developed feathers yet; a nestling.
(countable, figuratively, obsolete, uncountable)A person lacking life experience; an immature or naive person.
(East Anglia, countable, obsolete, uncountable)Synonym of topsoil (“upper layer of soil”).
Examples
2 sentencesThe callow recruits wished they were home.
He’s too callow to handle such responsibilities.
Origin
From Middle English calwe (“(adjective) bald; (noun) bald person”), from Old English calu,From Middle English calwe (“(adjective) bald; (noun) bald person”), from Old English calu, caluw (“without hair, bald, callow”), from Proto-West Germanic *kalu, from Proto-Germanic *kalwaz (“bald; bare, naked”), and then either:
From Irish caladh (“meadow by a riverbank”), from Old Irish calad (“shore, landing, port”), probably a noun use of calad (“hard”, adjective), from Proto-Celtic *kaletos (“cruel; hard; strong”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *ḱlH-eto- (“cold”) (in the sense of something frozen and thus hard), from an unclear root *ḱl(H)- or *kl(H)- (“hard”); or related to Proto-Germanic *halluz (“boulder, rock, stone”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kel- (“to cut, hew”). Perhaps influenced by Etymology 1 in some manner.
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Forms
plural: callowsSynonyms
11 synonymsLessons for this word
1 lessons- A1Countable and uncountable nouns — Because it can be uncountable
See also
neighbours in the dictionaryDictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.