I. chew 1 /tʃuː/ BrE AmE verb
[ Language: Old English ; Origin: ceowan ]
1 . [intransitive and transitive] to bite food several times before swallowing it:
This meat’s so tough I can hardly chew it!
chew at/on
a dog chewing on a bone
2 . [intransitive and transitive] to bite something continuously in order to taste it or because you are nervous
chew on
We gave the dog an old shoe to chew on.
chew your lip/nails
chew gum/tobacco
3 . chew the cud if a cow or sheep chews the cud, it keeps biting on food it has brought up from its stomach
4 . chew the fat informal to have a long friendly conversation
⇨ bite off more than you can chew at ↑ bite 1 (10)
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THESAURUS
▪ bite to use your teeth to cut, crush, or chew something:
The dog bit me!
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I sometimes bite my fingernails when I’m nervous.
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He bit into the apple.
▪ chew to keep biting something that is in your mouth:
Helen was chewing a piece of gum.
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He was chewing on a cigar.
▪ gnaw if an animal gnaws something, it bites it repeatedly:
The dog was in the yard gnawing on a bone.
▪ nip somebody/give somebody a nip to give someone or something a small sharp bite:
When I took the hamster out of his cage, he nipped me.
▪ nibble to take a lot of small bites from something:
A fish nibbled at the bait.
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She sat at her desk, nibbling her sandwich.
▪ sink your teeth into somebody/something to bite someone or something with a lot of force, so that your teeth go right into them:
The dog sank its teeth into my leg.
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He sank his teeth into the steak.
▪ chomp on something informal to bite something and chew it in a noisy way:
The donkey was chomping on a carrot.
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He was chomping away on big slice of toast.
▪ sting if an insect stings you, it makes a very small hole in your skin. You use sting about bees, wasps, and scorpions, and bite about mosquitoes, ants, spiders, and snakes:
She stepped on a wasps’ nest and must have been stung at least 20 times.
chew on something phrasal verb
informal to think carefully about something for a period of time
chew somebody ↔ out phrasal verb American English informal
to talk angrily to someone in order to show them that you disapprove of what they have done:
John couldn’t get the guy to cooperate and so I had to call and chew him out.
chew something ↔ over phrasal verb
to think carefully about something for a period of time:
Let me chew it over for a few days.
chew something ↔ up phrasal verb
1 . to damage or destroy something by tearing it into small pieces:
Be careful if you use that video recorder. It tends to chew tapes up.
2 . to bite something many times with your teeth so that you can make it smaller or softer and swallow it:
The dog’s chewed up my slippers again.
II. chew 2 BrE AmE noun [countable]
1 . the act of biting something many times with your teeth
2 . a sweet that you chew
3 . a piece of tobacco that you chew but do not swallow