Meow

How to spell meow

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce meow

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does meow mean?

1. nounThe characteristic crying sound made by a cat.
2. verbTo make the crying sound that a cat makes.

Meow in a sentence

• noun

  A faint meow came from behind the closed kitchen door.

• verb

  The cat will meow loudly whenever its bowl is empty.

• noun

  The kitten greeted every visitor with a small meow.

• verb

  Hungry kittens tend to meow at the back door before dawn.

Where does meow come from?

Language of origin: Other

Meow is an onomatopoeic word, meaning it was coined to imitate the actual sound a cat makes rather than being derived from an older root with a separate meaning. English has used spellings such as 'mew', 'miaow', and 'meaw' since at least the 1600s, all attempts to capture the same drawn-out feline call, and the modern American-style spelling 'meow' became settled in the nineteenth century. Because the word is simply an echo of a sound, almost every language has its own close cousin, from the French 'miaou' to the Chinese 'miāo', which is why they all resemble one another. The spelling trap lies in the vowel cluster 'eo' followed by 'w', since the word is heard far more often than it is written. Keeping the order as 'm', then 'eo', then 'w' is the whole challenge, as there is no helpful Latin or Greek root to lean on.

How the word is built

• meow (imitative root representing the cry of a cat; no prefix or suffix, an onomatopoeic single unit)