Other forms: caws, cawing
To caw is to make the harsh cry of a crow. Crows cawing, a single caw, cawed overhead.
The word is the sound, which is why it needs no explanation. Crows caw to keep a group together and to warn, and they recognise individual human faces and remember them for years — a cawing mob overhead may be about somebody in particular. Note rook and raven, which caw differently and are told apart by voice.
1verbcawTo make the harsh cry of a crow.
“A crow cawed loudly from the church roof as the funeral began.”
caw is a bird call.
Caw imitates the sound of the bird. Words of this kind are made afresh in every language.
imitative of the sound
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire