chow

• (UK) IPA^(key): /t͡ʃaʊ/

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aʊ
• Homophone: ciao

Shortened from chow-chow, from Chinese Pidgin English chow-chow. Compare Macanese chau-cháu. See also English chow fun, chow mein, etc.

chow (usually uncountable, plural chows)

1. (slang, uncountable) Food, especially snacks.

   I'm going to pick up some chow for dinner.

   • 1979, Gustav Hasford, The Short-Timers, New York: Bantam Books, published 1980, →ISBN, page 93:

     Donlon says, "Well, we're rich and we got beaucoup beer and beaucoup chow. Now all we need is the Bob Hope show."

2. (Trinidad and Tobago) Unripe, or partially ripened, fruit seasoned and served as a dish, e.g. pineapple chow or mango chow.
3. 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.’

   • 1988 March 4, Jane Weinberg, “First Person: Me and Georgia O'Keeffe”, in Chicago Reader‎:

     While we were talking, one of the chows, the rusty one, had come over to me and I was absently petting him.

4. (chiefly Australia, slang, now rare) A Chinese person.
   • 1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter V, in Capricornia‎, page 74:

     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, published 2010, page 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!’

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

1. (slang, South Africa) To eat.

Borrowed from Chinese 州 (zhōu).

chow (plural chows)

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

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

chow (plural chows)

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

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.
   • 2007, Eleanor Noss Whitney, A Mah Jong Handbook: How to Play, Score, and Win, page 154:

     […] while the adversary on his right will repeatedly bury in the discard the very tiles he wishes to chow but can't.

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