sew
/soʊ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.45 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
3
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To use a needle to pass thread repeatedly through (pieces of fabric) in order to join them together.
Transitive verb
Example Sentences
- "I sewed a button on."
- "Balls were first made of grass or leaves held together by strings, and later of pieces of animal skin sewn together and stuffed with feathers or hay."
- "She [Kate Spade] took the label, which originally had been on the inside of the bag, and sewed it to the outside."
- "to sew money into a bag"
- "Now geld with the gelder the ram and the bul, / sew ponds, amend dammes, and sel webster thy wul"
- "[…] accommodated a sluce to clense and sew the Pond, with a grate of wood to let out the wast, as in other stews and Vivaries."
Etymology
From Middle English sewen, sowen, from Old English siwian, seowian, seowan (“to sew, mend, patch, knit together, link, unite”), from Proto-Germanic *siwjaną (“to sew”), from Proto-Indo-European *syewH- (“to sew”). Cognate with Scots sew, North Frisian saie, sei, Saterland Frisian säie, Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish sy, and, more distantly, Polish szyć, Russian шить (šitʹ), Latin suō, Sanskrit सीव्यति (sī́vyati). Related to seam.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /soʊ/
- British English: /səʊ/
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Botany.
Inflected Forms
sews (present, singular)
sewing (participle, present)
sewed (past)
sewn (participle, past)
sewed (participle, past)
sewen (obsolete, participle)
no-table-tags (table tags)
glossary (inflection template)
sewed (first person, past)
sewest (archaic, present)
sewed (past, second person)
sewedst (archaic, past)