Library / English Dictionary

GNAW

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

Irregular inflected form: gnawn   

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Become ground down or deteriorate

Example:

Her confidence eroded

Synonyms:

eat at; erode; gnaw; gnaw at; wear away

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Hypernyms (to "gnaw" is one way to...):

crumble; decay; dilapidate (fall into decay or ruin)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s

Sense 2

Meaning:

Bite or chew on with the teeth

Example:

gnaw an old cracker

Classified under:

Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

Hypernyms (to "gnaw" is one way to...):

chew; jaw; manducate; masticate (chew (food); to bite and grind with the teeth)

bite; seize with teeth (to grip, cut off, or tear with or as if with the teeth or jaws)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something

Derivation:

gnawer (relatively small placental mammals having a single pair of constantly growing incisor teeth specialized for gnawing)

Credits

 Context examples: 

Thenceforward, he sat all day over the fire in the private room, gnawing his nails; there he dined, sitting alone with his fears, the waiter visibly quailing before his eye; and thence, when the night was fully come, he set forth in the corner of a closed cab, and was driven to and fro about the streets of the city.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Alleyne passed him swiftly by, for he had learned from the monks to have no love for the wandering friars, and, besides, there was a great half-gnawed mutton bone sticking out of his pouch to prove him a liar.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It was the same meal and the same cooking as their Norse or German ancestors might have sat down to fourteen centuries before, and, indeed, as I looked through the steam of the dishes at the lines of fierce and rugged faces, and the mighty shoulders which rounded themselves over the board, I could have imagined myself at one of those old-world carousals of which I had read, where the savage company gnawed the joints to the bone, and then, with murderous horseplay, hurled the remains at their prisoners.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It was like the sound which a mouse makes when it is gnawing a plank, and I lay listening to it for some time under the impression that it must come from that cause.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

She took the rabbit from him, and while the sapling swayed and teetered threateningly above her she calmly gnawed off the rabbit's head.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

The muskeg berries did not allay this gnawing, while they made his tongue and the roof of his mouth sore with their irritating bite.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

I should have longed rather to deviate to a wood I saw not far off, which appeared in its thick shade to offer inviting shelter; but I was so sick, so weak, so gnawed with nature's cravings, instinct kept me roaming round abodes where there was a chance of food.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The wrong done him by the Transcontinental loomed colossal, for strong upon him were all the dreary months of vain yearning, of hunger and privation, and his present hunger awoke and gnawed at him, reminding him that he had eaten nothing since the day before, and little enough then.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Half a mile up the right fork, his quick ears caught the sound of gnawing teeth.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

All day the wind blew and the snow fell, and all day we travelled, while our stomachs gnawed their desire and our bodies grew weaker with every step they took.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)