gnaw
/nɔ/ verb C1- To bite something persistently, especially something tough. · The dog gnawed the bone until it broke in two.
- To produce excessive anxiety or worry. · Her comment gnawed at me all day and I couldn't think about anything else.
- To corrode; to fret away; to waste.
He/she/it gnaws · Past gnawed · Past participle gnawed · -ing form gnawing
Verb forms
- Base form
- gnaw
- He/she/it
- gnaws
- Past
- gnawed
- Past participle
- gnawed
- -ing form
- gnawing
From the library
But when Anne had gone Diana dried her tears and went to a beach picnic at White Sands with some of her Carmody cousins, where she contrived to enjoy herself tolerably well; while Marilla plunged fiercely into unnecessary work and kept at it all day long with the bitterest kind of heartache--the ache that burns and gnaws and cannot wash itself away in ready tears.
The Mouse, recognizing his roar, came and gnawed the rope with his teeth, and set him free, exclaiming:
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.
He gnawed his lip, drummed his fingers upon the table, and showed every other symptom of acute impatience.
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