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jawfallen

adj

Etymology

From jaw + fallen.

  1. inherited from *fallą✻
  2. inherited from fealle — “trap, snare”
  3. inherited from feall
  4. inherited from fal
  5. inherited from *h₃elh₁-✻ — “to collapse, fall; to destroy”
  6. inherited from *fallaną✻ — “to fall”
  7. inherited from *fallan✻ — “to fall”
  8. inherited from feallan — “to fall, fail, decay, die, attack”
  9. inherited from fallen
  10. suffixed as fallen — “fall + en”
  11. compounded as jawfallen — “jaw + fallen”

Definitions

  1. Dejected, dispirited.

    • He was pitifully jawfallen. As the guards jogged him out of the room he waved me a farewell.

  2. Having a "fallen" or locked jaw (and hence sometimes unable to speak), variously…

    Having a "fallen" or locked jaw (and hence sometimes unable to speak), variously attributed to dejection (the previous sense) or lockjaw.

    • Legion is a yelping Cur, he only made a noise behind their Backs, but durst not look them in the Face. Indeed then he did make a slip, or broke his Halter, but now he's Chain'd or Jawfallen, for I han't heard of him never since.
    • Headmouldshot and Mouldfallen — 34 Jawfallen — 2 Jaundies — 76

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for jawfallen. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA