overjaw

English

Alternative forms

  • over jaw

Etymology

From Middle English overjowe, over jawe, a partial calque of earlier Middle English over chavel (“upper jaw”), equivalent to over- +‎ jaw.

Noun

overjaw (plural overjaws)

  1. (somewhat rare) The upper jaw (superior maxillary).
    Antonyms: lower jaw, netherjaw, underjaw
    • 1926, Arthur Percival Newton, Travel and Travellers of the Middle Ages, page 161:
      And when they eat, they move the overjaw and nought the nether jaw, and they have no tongue.
    • 1993, The S S E A Journal, volume 23, page 66:
      The King was now represented with a receding forehead, a lined and haggard face, a long nose, thick lips, slanting eyes, a hanging overjaw, and hollow cheeks.
    • 2022, Sharon Olds, Balladz, page 143:
      He drove her over the Hayward Fault,
      its boundaries jammed together like an overjaw clenched to an underjaw.
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.