Meaning

7 senses
  1. (slang, uncountable, usually)Food, especially snacks.

    I'm going to pick up some chow for dinner.

    Fressalien

    жратва́žratvá, ха́вчикxávčik, харчи́xarčí

  2. (Trinidad and Tobago, uncountable, usually)Unripe, or partially ripened, fruit seasoned and served as a dish, e.g. pineapple chow or mango chow.

  3. (uncountable, usually)A Chow Chow.

  4. A prefecture or district of the second rank in China, or the chief city of such a district.

  5. A run of three consecutive tiles of the same suit.

  6. A call for forming such a run using a discarded tile.

  7. (Australia, archaic, slang, uncountable, usually)A Chinese person.

More definitions
  • breed of medium-sized dogs with a thick coat and fluffy curled tails and distinctive blue-black tongues; believed to have originated in northern China
  • informal terms for a meal
  • the imperial dynasty of China from 1122 to 221 BC; notable for the rise of Confucianism and Taoism

Examples

5 sentences
  1. I chowed down on an ant.

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  2. As for me, I don't eat meat, so I ordered veg chow mein.

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  3. This chow contains not less than 23 per cent protein and 4.5 per cent fat, and about 57 per cent carbohydrate.

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  4. Boris's Chow barks all the time at the attic.

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  5. "Hey, Mary! Even in the prison, the chow was better!" "Then go back and eat there."

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Translations

4 languages
Русский
By meaning 1
(slang) food, especially snacks:
Deutsch
By meaning 1
(slang) food, especially snacks:

Origin

Shortened from chow-chow, from Chinese Pidgin English chow-chow. Compare Macanese chau-chá

Shortened from chow-chow, from Chinese Pidgin English chow-chow. Compare Macanese chau-cháu. See also English chow fun, chow mein, etc.

Borrowed from Chinese 州 (zhōu).

Phono-semantic matching of Chinese 吃 (chī, literally “to eat”), influenced by the “food” sense of Etymology 1 above.

Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source

Forms

plural: chows
Singularchow

uncountable

Synonyms

11 synonyms
Close in meaning
  • breed of medium-sized dogs with a thick coat and fluffy curled tails and distinctive blue-black tongues; believed to have originated in northern China:chow chow
  • informal terms for a meal:chuckeatsgrub
  • the imperial dynasty of China from 1122 to 221 BC; notable for the rise of Confucianism and Taoism:ZhouZhou dynastyChouChou dynastyChow dynasty

Word family

9 related words

See also

neighbours in the dictionary
chow — meaning, examples, forms, synonyms | Krumeto