mews

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /mjuːz/, enPR: myo͞oz

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Homophone: muse
• Rhymes: -uːz

Etymology 1

From Mewes, the name of the royal stables at Charing Cross, which is the plural of mew (“falcon cage”).

Noun

mews (plural mews or mewses)

1. (British) An alley where there are stables; a narrow passage; a confined place.
   • 1855, Robert Browning, chapter XXIII, in Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came:

     What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?
     No foot-print leading to that horrid mews,
     None out of it.

   • 1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, →OCLC, pages 110–111:

     It was healthy and magnificient because one room, above a mews, somewhere near the river, contained fifty excited, talkative, friendly people.

   • 1935, T. S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral, Part II:

     It was here in the kitchen, in the passage
     In the mews in the harn in the byre in the market place […] .

   • 1945 September and October, “The Origin of the Euston Hotel”, in Railway Magazine, page 266:

     It was further proposed that a space of ground near these establishments should be appropriated to a mews for the convenience of persons requiring post horses, and for the standing of horses and carriages at livery.

   • 2025 August 2, Cathy Hawker, “How bougie is your high street?”, in FT Weekend, House & Home, page 2:

     [Pavilion Road is] a cobbled mews lined with butchers, cheesemongers, florists and cafés offering a village-like counterpoint to the grandeur of the main thoroughfare.

2. (falconry) A place where birds of prey are housed.

Translations

alley where there are stables; narrow passage; confined place

• Hungarian: istállósor (hu)
• Irish: eachlann f, stáblaí m pl
• Welsh: gwastrodfa f

place where birds of prey are housed

• Irish: cúb seabhac f

References

• Douglas Harper (2001–2025), “mews”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.

Etymology 2

Noun

mews

1. plural of mew

Etymology 3

See mew.

Verb

mews

1. third-person singular simple present indicative of mew

Anagrams

• MWEs, smew, wems