different between chow vs cahow

English

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /t?a?/
• Rhymes: -a?
• Homophone: ciao

Etymology 1

Shortened from chow-chow, Chinese Pidgin English of unclear origin.

Noun

chow (usually uncountable, plural chows)

1. (slang, uncountable) Food, especially snacks.
2. A Chow Chow.
   • 1914, Saki, ‘The Lull’, Beasts and Superbeasts:

     ‘I'd try and grapple with him myself, only I've got my chow in my room, you know, and he goes for pigs wherever he finds them.’
3. (chiefly Australia, slang, now rare) A Chinese person.
   • 1938, Xavier Herbert, Capricornia, Chapter V, p. 74, [2]

     These were the creatures Nawnim had been amazed to see about him on the day of his arrival. When he inquired about them, Anna told him they were Japs an' Chows.

   • 1977, John Le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy, Folio Society 2010, p. 11:

     ‘Now look here old man if you should ever bump into an interesting Chow from over the river – one with access, follow me? – just you remember High Haven!’

Derived terms

• chow down

Translations

Verb

chow (third-person singular simple present chows, present participle chowing, simple past and past participle chowed)

1. (slang, South Africa) To eat.

Translations

Etymology 2

Borrowed from Chinese ? (zh?u).

Noun

chow (plural chows)

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

Etymology 3

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

Noun

chow (plural chows)

1. (mahjong) A run of three consecutive tiles of the same suit.

Verb

chow (third-person singular simple present chows, present participle chowing, simple past and past participle chowed)

1. (mahjong) To call a discarded tile to produce a chow.

Translations

Coordinate terms

• pung
• kong

Anagrams

• owch

English

Etymology

Imitative of its cry.

Noun

cahow (plural cahows)

1. An endangered nocturnal burrowing bird, Pterodroma cahow, from Bermuda; the Bermuda petrel.
   • 2000, Errol Fuller, Extinct Birds, Oxford 2000, p. 60:

     The cahow was known to colonists in Bermuda during the early part of the seventeenth century, and these people relied on it quite heavily for food.