different between content vs saw

English

Etymology 1

From Middle French content (“satisfied”), from Latin contentus (“contained; satisfied”), past participle of contin?re (“to contain”).

Pronunciation

• enPR: k?nt?nt', IPA^(key): /k?n?t?nt/
• Hyphenation: con?tent

Adjective

content (comparative more content or contenter, superlative most content)

2. Satisfied, pleased, contented.

   • This new-comer was a man who in any company would have seemed striking. […] He was smooth-faced, and his fresh skin and well-developed figure bespoke the man in good physical condition through active exercise, yet well content with the world's apportionment.

Translations

Noun

content (uncountable)

1. Satisfaction, contentment; pleasure.

   They were in a state of sleepy content after supper.

   • 1788, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary, Oxford 2009, p. 51:

     ‘It is very difficult to […] learn to seek content, instead of happiness.’

   • 1791, Elizabeth Inchbald, A Simple Story, Penguin 2009, p. 287:

     ‘I understand you—upon every other subject, but the only one, my content requires, you are ready to obey me.’

   • c. 1591, William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2: Act 1, Scene 1

     Such is the fullness of my heart's content.
2. (obsolete) Acquiescence without examination.
   • 1711, Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism

     The sense they humbly take upon content.

3. That which contents or satisfies; that which if attained would make one happy.
   • c. 1591, William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2: Act 1, Scene 1

     So will I in England work your grace's full content.

4. (Britain, House of Lords) An expression of assent to a bill or motion; an affirmate vote.
5. (Britain, House of Lords, by metonymy) A member who votes in assent.

Derived terms

• contentment
• contentness
• discontent
• malcontent
• to one's heart's content

Interjection

content

1. (archaic) Alright, agreed.

Verb

content (third-person singular simple present contents, present participle contenting, simple past and past participle contented)

2. (transitive) To give contentment or satisfaction; to satisfy; to make happy.
   • 1611, King James Version of the Bible, Mark 15:15,^[1]

     And so Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barabbas unto them, and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged him, to be crucified.

   • 1741, Isaac Watts, The Improvement of the Mind, London: James Brackstone, Part I, Chapter 14, p. 194,^[2]

     Do not content yourselves with meer Words and Names, lest your laboured Improvements only amass a heap of unintelligible Phrases, and you feed upon Husks instead of Kernels.

   • 2016, Felicity Cloake, “How to make the perfect cacio e pepe,” The Guardian, 3 November, 2016,^[3]

     Caz Hildebrand and Jacob Kenedy recommend rigatoni in the Geometry of Pasta, and Christopher Boswell, the chef behind the Rome Sustainable Food project, prefers wholemeal paccheri or rigatoni in his book Pasta, on the basis that “the flavour of the whole grain is strong enough to stand up to the sharp and salty sheep’s milk cheese” (as I can find neither easily, I have to content myself with brown penne instead).

3. (transitive, obsolete) To satisfy the expectations of; to pay; to requite.
   • c. 1599 William Shakespeare, Richard III, Act III, Scene 2,^[4]

     Come the next Sabbath, and I will content you.

Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle English content (plural contentes, contence), from Latin contentus, past participle of contin?re (“to hold in, contain”), as Etymology 1, above. English apparently developed a substantive form of the adjective, which is not mirrored in Romance languages.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?k?n.t?nt/
• (UK) IPA^(key): /?k?n.t?nt/
• (US) enPR: k?n't?nt, IPA^(key): /?k?n.t?nt/
• Hyphenation: con?tent

Adjective

content (comparative more content, superlative most content)

1. (obsolete) Contained.

Noun

content (countable and uncountable, plural contents)

1. (uncountable) That which is contained.
2. Subject matter; that which is contained in writing, speech, video, etc.
3. The amount of material contained; contents.

4. (obsolete) Capacity for containing.
5. (mathematics) The n-dimensional space contained by an n-dimensional polytope (called volume in the case of a polyhedron and area in the case of a polygon).
6. (algebra, ring theory, of a polynomial with coefficients in a GCD domain) The greatest common divisor of the coefficients; (of a polynomial with coefficients in an integral domain) the common factor of the coefficients which, when removed, leaves the adjusted coefficients with no common factor that is noninvertible.

Derived terms

Translations

Related terms

Further reading

• content in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• content in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Anagrams

• Connett

Catalan

Etymology

From Latin contentus.

Pronunciation

• (Balearic, Valencian) IPA^(key): /kon?tent/
• (Central) IPA^(key): /kun?ten/

Adjective

content (feminine contenta, masculine plural contents, feminine plural contentes)

1. content, satisfied, pleased

   Antonym: descontent

Derived terms

• descontent

Further reading

• “content” in Diccionari de la llengua catalana, segona edició, Institut d’Estudis Catalans.
• “content” in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana.
• “content” in Diccionari normatiu valencià, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
• “content” in Diccionari català-valencià-balear, Antoni Maria Alcover and Francesc de Borja Moll, 1962.

French

Etymology 1

From Middle French content, from Old French, borrowed from Latin contentus.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /k??.t??/
• Homophones: comptant, contant, contents

Adjective

content (feminine singular contente, masculine plural contents, feminine plural contentes)

1. content, satisfied, pleased

Derived terms

Etymology 2

See the etymology of the main entry.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /k??t/

Verb

content

1. third-person plural present/subjunctive of conter

Further reading

• “content” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Louisiana Creole French

Etymology

From French content (“content”), compare Haitian Creole kontan.

Verb

content

1. to be contented

References

• Alcée Fortier, Louisiana Folktales

Middle French

Etymology

From Old French content, borrowed from Latin contentus.

Adjective

content m (feminine singular contente, masculine plural contens, feminine plural contentes)

1. happy; satisfied; content

Descendants

• French: content

Norman

Alternative forms

• caontent (Guernsey)

Etymology

From Old French, borrowed from Latin contentus (“having been held together, contained”), from contine?, contin?re (“hold or keep together, surround, contain”).

Adjective

content m

1. (Jersey) happy

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: sô, IPA^(key): /s??/

  Homophones: (in some non-rhotic accents): soar, sore

• Rhymes: -??
• (US) enPR: sô, IPA^(key): /s?/
• (cot–caught merger) enPR: sä, IPA^(key): /s??/

  (idiosyncratic, past tense of 'see') IPA^(key): /s??l/

Etymology 1

The noun from Middle English sawe, sawgh, from Old English saga, sagu (“saw”), from Proto-Germanic *sagô, *sag? (“saw”), from Proto-Indo-European *sek- (“to cut”). Cognate with West Frisian seage (“saw”), Dutch zaag (“saw”), German Säge (“saw”), Danish sav (“saw”), Swedish såg (“saw”), Icelandic sög (“saw”), and through Indo-European, with Latin sec? (“cut”) and Italian sega (“saw”).

The verb from Middle English sawen, from the noun above.

Noun

saw (plural saws)

1. A tool with a toothed blade used for cutting hard substances, in particular wood or metal
2. A musical saw.
3. A sawtooth wave.

Derived terms

Descendants

• Sranan Tongo: sa

Translations

Verb

saw (third-person singular simple present saws, present participle sawing, simple past sawed, past participle sawed or sawn)

1. (transitive) To cut (something) with a saw.

   They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented;

2. (intransitive) To make a motion back and forth similar to cutting something with a saw.

   The fiddler sawed away at his instrument.

3. (intransitive) To be cut with a saw.

   The timber saws smoothly.

4. (transitive) To form or produce (something) by cutting with a saw.

   to saw boards or planks (i.e. to saw logs or timber into boards or planks)

   to saw shingles; to saw out a panel

Derived terms

• saw gourds
• saw wood

Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle English sawe, from Old English sagu, saga (“story, tale, saying, statement, report, narrative, tradition”), from Proto-West Germanic *sag?, from Proto-Germanic *sag?, *sag? (“saying, story”), from Proto-Indo-European *sek?e-, *sk??-, from *sek?- (“to follow”). Cognate with Dutch sage (“saga”), German Sage (“legend, saga, tale, fable”), Danish sagn (“legend”), Norwegian soga (“story”), Icelandic saga (“story, tale, history”). More at saga, say. Doublet of saga.

Noun

saw (plural saws)

1. (obsolete) Something spoken; speech, discourse.

   • And for thy trew sawys, and I may lyve many wynters, there was never no knyght better rewardid […].

     And for your true discourses, and I may live many winters, there was never no knight better rewarded […].

2. A saying or proverb.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:saying

   • 1599, William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II Scene VII, lines 152-5.

     And then the justice, / In fair round belly with good capon lined, / With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, / Full of wise saws and modern instances.

   • 1902, Charles Robert Ashbee, Masque of the Edwards of England, page 8.

     At his crowning […] the priest in his honour preached on the saw, 'Vox populi, vox Dei.'

   • 2017, Andrew Marantz, "Becoming Steve Bannon's Bannon", The New Yorker, Feb 13&20 ed.

     There’s an old saw about Washington, D.C., that staffers in their twenties know more about the minutiae of government than their bosses do.

3. (obsolete) Opinion, idea, belief.

4. (obsolete) Proposal, suggestion; possibility.
   • c. 1350-1400, unknown, The Erl of Toulous

     All they assentyd to the sawe; They thoght he spake reson and lawe.

5. (obsolete) Dictate; command; decree.
   • 1595, Edmund Spenser, Colin Clouts Come Home Againe

     [Love] rules the creatures by his powerful saw.

Derived terms

• soothsaw
• withsaw

Translations

Etymology 3

Verb

saw

1. simple past tense of see
2. (colloquial, nonstandard) past participle of see

Interjection

saw

1. (slang) What's up (either as a greeting or actual question).

Anagrams

• ASW, AWS, Was, aws, was

Atong (India)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /s?aw/

Adjective

saw (Bengali script ???)

1. rotten

Khasi

Etymology

From Proto-Khasian *sa?w, an innovation of the Khasian branch. Cognate with Pnar soo.

Numeral

saw

1. four

Middle English

Noun

saw

1. saw
   • 1387', Ranulf Higden, John of Trevisa (translator), Polychronicon

     Þe more comoun sawe is þat Remus was i-slawe for he leep ouer þe newe walles of Rome.

     The more common opinion is that Remus was slain for he lept over the new walls of Rome.

Northern Kurdish

Noun

saw ?

1. terror
2. horror

Scots

Pronunciation

• (Doric and most Southern Scots dialects) IPA^(key): /sa/
• (Central and some Southern Scots dialects) IPA^(key): /s?/

Etymology 1

Verb

saw

1. (South Scots) simple past tense of sei
2. (Northern and Central) simple past tense of see

Etymology 2

Noun

saw (plural saws)

1. A salve.

Zhuang

Pronunciation

• (Standard Zhuang) IPA^(key): /?a???/
• Tone numbers: saw¹
• Hyphenation: saw

Etymology 1

From Proto-Tai *s??? (“writing; book”), from Middle Chinese ? (MC ???, “writing; book”). Cognate with Lao ?? (s??), Thai ??? (s???).

Alternative forms

• sw

Noun

saw (Sawndip forms ???? or ? or ???? or ????, old orthography s??)

1. written language; writing; script
2. (Chinese) character
3. word
4. book
5. teaching material
6. receipt; voucher

Derived terms

Etymology 2

From Proto-Tai *sa?? (“clear; clean”). Cognate with Thai ?? (s?i), Northern Thai ??, Isan ??, Lao ?? (sai), Lü ?? (?ay), Tai Dam ??, Shan ??? (s?ue), Tai Nüa ??? (sáue), Ahom ???????? (saw) or ???????????? (sawu).

Adjective

saw (Sawndip forms ???? or ???? or ?, old orthography s??)

1. clean
2. (of transparent objects, water, etc.) clear
3. (of liquids other than water) watery; thin

Etymology 3

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “from ??”)

Verb

saw (Sawndip forms ???? or ?, old orthography s??)

1. to lose