maw

Etymology 1

From Middle English mawe, maghe, maȝe, from Old English maga (“stomach; maw”), from Proto-West Germanic *magō, from Proto-Germanic *magô (“belly; stomach”), from Proto-Indo-European *mak-, *maks- (“bag, bellows, belly”). Cognates Cognate with West Frisian mage, Dutch maag (“stomach; belly”), German Low German Maag, German Magen (“stomach”), Danish mave, Norwegian mage (“stomach”), Swedish mage (“stomach; belly”), and also with Welsh megin (“bellows”), archaic Russian мошна́ (mošná, “pocket, bag”), Lithuanian mãkas (“purse”).

noun

1. (archaic) The stomach, especially of an animal.
2. The upper digestive tract (where food enters the body), especially the mouth and jaws of a fearsome and ravenous creature.
   Adam requires a touch of feminine lace and a whisper of diaphanous silk, not a direct vision of the gaping maw of the human vulva. 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 23
3. (slang, derogatory) The mouth.
   Shut your maw!
4. Any large, insatiable or perilous opening.
   One two! I was born in a cross-fire hurricane. And I howled at the maw in the drivin' rain. But it's all right now, in fact, it's a gas. But it's all right. I'm Jumpin' Jack Flash. It's a gas, gas, gas. 2011-10-11, “Jumping Jack Flash (Live 1973)” (track 14), in Brussels Affair (Live 1973), performed by The Rolling Stones
5. Appetite; inclination.

Etymology 2

By shortening of mother

noun

1. (dialect, colloquial) Mother.

Etymology 3

See mew (“a gull”), Norwegian måke (“a gull”)

noun

1. A gull.