taws
Americannoun
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a whip or leather thong used to drive a spinning top.
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a leather whip having its tip divided into smaller strips, used to punish schoolchildren.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of taws
1505–15; plural of obsolete taw < Old Norse taug rope; cognate with Old English tēag tie
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Marbles are divided into "taws," or well-made strong marbles with which you shoot, and "clays," or the ordinary cheap colored marbles at which you aim and with which you pay your losses.
From What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes by Fisher, Dorothy Canfield
To prevent the loss of taws one of us was sent ahead to watch for their coming and listen for the faint thud of their fall, while the other three drove from the tee.
From The Complete Golfer by Vardon, Harry
He is the most stupid of all my mother's children: he knows nothing of his book: when he should mind that, he is hiding or hoarding his taws and marbles, or laying up farthings.
From The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 by Aitken, George A.
He is the most stupid of all my mother's children; he knows nothing of his book; when he should mind that, he is hiding or hoarding his taws and marbles, or laying up farthings.
From Isaac Bickerstaff, physician and astrologer by Steele, Richard, Sir
And you may helpe them much by enlarging their rootes with the taws of the tree, whence you take them.
From A New Orchard And Garden or, The best way for planting, grafting, and to make any ground good, for a rich Orchard: Particularly in the North and generally for the whole kingdome of England by Lawson, William, fl. 1618
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
