gnaw

English

Pronunciation

• IPA: /nɔː/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɔː

Verb

gnaw (third-person singular simple present gnaws, present participle gnawing, simple past gnawed, past participle gnawed or gnawn)

1. (transitive) To bite something persistently.

   • Her teeth gnawed at me all night, keeping me twisting and turning from pain.

     We saw that the dog had been gnawing on the bone.

2. (intransitive) To produce excessive anxiety or worry.

   • Her comment gnawed at me all night, keeping me twisting and turning in bed.

Derived terms

• gnawer
• gnawable

Translations

to bite something persistently

Albanian: bren (sq) Arabic: نخر (ar) (nákhara) Armenian: կրծել (hy) (krçel) Belarusian: грызці (be) (hrýzci) Bosnian: glodati (bs) Breton: krignat Bulgarian: гриза (bg) (grizá) Catalan: rosegar Chinese: Mandarin: 啃 (zh) (kěn), 咬 (zh) (yǎo), 噬 (zh) (shì) Croatian: glodati (hr) Czech: hlodat (cs), hryzat (cs) Dutch: knagen (nl) Esperanto: ronĝi Finnish: jyrsiä (fi), jäytää (fi), kalvaa (fi) French: ronger (fr) German: nagen (de) Hebrew: כִּרְסֵם (he) (kirsém)

Hungarian: rág (hu) Icelandic: naga (is) Italian: rodere (it) Japanese: 齧る (ja) (かじる, kajiru) Latin: rōdō (la) Macedonian: гриза (mk) (grizá) Old Church Slavonic: грꙑзти Polish: gryźć (pl) Portuguese: roer (pt) Romanian: roade (ro) Russian: грызть (ru) (gryzt') impf., глодать (ru) (glodát') impf. Serbo-Croatian: Cyrillic: глодати (sh) Roman: glodati (sh) Slovak: hlodať (sk), hrýzť (sk) Slovene: gristi (sl) Spanish: roer (es) Swedish: gnaga (sv) Ukrainian: гризти (uk) (hrýzty)

Anagrams

• Ngwa
• wang, Wang