chew
/t͡ʃ(j)u/ verb B2- To crush with the teeth by repeated closing and opening of the jaws; done to food to soften it and break it down by the action of saliva before it is swallowed. · Make sure to chew thoroughly, and don't talk with your mouth full!· The steak was tough to chew as it had been cooked too long.
- To grind, tear, or otherwise degrade or demolish something with teeth or as with teeth. · He keeps his feed in steel drums to prevent the mice from chewing holes in the feed-sacks.· The harsh desert wind and sand had chewed the stump into ragged strips of wood.
- The condition of something being torn or ground up mechanically.
- To think about something; to ponder; to chew over. · The professor stood at the blackboard, chalk in hand, and chewed the question the student had asked.
- To chew tobacco. · To reduce cancer risk, it is best that you neither chew nor smoke.· He'd been chewing for many years by the time he first noticed some white plaques on his oral mucosa.
He/she/it chews · Past chewed · Past participle chewed · -ing form chewing
Verb forms
- Base form
- chew
- He/she/it
- chews
- Past
- chewed
- Past participle
- chewed
- -ing form
- chewing
Phrasal verbs and expressions
- chew off Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see chew, ...
- chew on Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see chew, on.
- chew out To lecture, scold, reprimand, or rebuke, especially in an...
- chew over To think deeply about; to ponder or mull over.
- chew up To chew so as to make something pulpy or tangled.
From the library
Bell’s spruce grove as usual, fully intending to stay only long enough to “pick a chew.” But spruce groves are seductive and yellow nuts of gum beguiling; they picked and loitered and strayed; and as usual the first thing that recalled them to a sense of the flight of time was Jimmy Glover shouting from the top of a patriarchal old spruce “Master’s coming.”
There was a tang in the very air that inspired the hearts of small maidens tripping, unlike snails, swiftly and willingly to school; and it _was_ jolly to be back again at the little brown desk beside Diana, with Ruby Gillis nodding across the aisle and Carrie Sloane sending up notes and Julia Bell passing a “chew” of gum down from the back seat.
It’s 9.45 o’clock, and not a single picture hat or piece of pineapple chewing gum has showed up yet.”
The first product ever scanned with a UPC barcode was a pack of chewing gum, which was sold in a supermarket in Troy, Ohio, on June 26, 1974.
Other matches
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