Other forms: meowing, meows
To meow is to make the call of a cat. The cat meowed, meowing at the door, a loud meow.
Adult cats barely use it with each other — it is aimed at humans, learned because it works, and each cat develops its own set for its own household. The word imitates the sound, and English once said mew. Note the British spelling miaow.
1verbmeowTo make the call of a cat.
“The cat meowed at the door until I let her in.”
meow is a sound.
An imitative word, an alteration of the older mew. Nearly every language names the sound the same way.
Middle English
mewen
English, today
meow
Built from
Alteration of earlier mew, from Middle English mewen, mouwen (“to mew, meow”), of imitative of the sound origin. Compare stq mauje, miauje (“to meow”), West Frisian miaukje (“to meow”), Dutch miauwen (“to meow”), Middle Low German mauwen, mawen, mouwen (“to meow”) (whence modern German Low German mauen, miauen (“to meow”)), Middle High German mouen, modern German miauen (“to meow”). Some spellings were modelled on miaou. Meow and its spelling variants entered widespread currency in the 19th century, mostly replacing mew, possibly because phonetic change meant that word had ceased to approximate a cat's cry (contrast the pronunciation of mewen compared to modern).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Pets & Pet Care