Obs. (Also 6 cheaw, chew.) [App. a by-form of JAW, modified by association with the vb. chew or its by-form chaw; it was contemporary in origin with the latter.]
1. Usually in pl. Jaws, chaps, fauces.
1530. Palsgr., 507. Get me a kaye to open his chawes.
1535. Coverdale, Job xxxiii. 1. I will open my mouth, and my tonge shal speake out of my chawes.
1540. Earl Surrey, Poems, 66, ‘How no age.’ My withered skin How it doth shew my dented chews … And eke my toothless chaps.
1548. Olde, Erasm. Par. 2nd Tim., 25. I was delyuered from the moste rageing lyons cheawes.
1557. Primer, M ij. How swete be thy wordes to my chawes.
1583. Stubbes, Anat. Abus., II. 64. From the chawes of the greedie lions.
1601. Holland, Pliny (1634), I. 328. Any greater load than they can bite between their chawes.
1611. Bible, Ezek. xxxviii. 4 [also xxix. 4]. I will turne thee backe, and put hookes into thy chawes [mod. edd. jaws].
1626. Raleigh’s Ghost, 116. The same little beast … also entring into the chawes of the Crocodile.
b. rarely in sing. A jaw.
1590. Spenser, F. Q., I. iv. 30. All the poison ran about his chaw.
1601. Holland, Pliny (1634), I. 337. The Camell … hath no fore-teeth in the vpper chaw.
2. Comb. chaw-bone = jaw-bone.
1546. Langley, Pol. Verg. De invent., III. x. 77 a. Ye chawe bone of a serpent.
1612. T. Taylor, Comm. Titus iii. 6. 663. The Lord opened a chawbone.
a. 1670. Hacket, Abp. Williams, I. (1692), 144. To break the Chaw-bone of the Lye.
