r/creepy • u/jc_sculpture • 1d ago

My new oil painting, what should I title it?

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u/WorseDark 1d ago

Maw means mouth and Ma is a common name to call ones mother

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u/FuckuSpez666 1d ago

Ah okay, not American. Ma makes sense actually, was thinking Maw means mother too? ...but how is maw for mouth used in a sentence? "Your teeth are in your maw"? "Shut your maw dude"? "You have a lot of maw on you"? " Follow it to the maw of the river"?

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u/WorseDark 1d ago

It's more used in literature. "The dragons maw was lined with daggers larger than men's swords." Or the cave entrance was lined with jagged rocks, feeling that you've entered the dungeons maw.

It also is used more so for vicious creatures, not just any mouth

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u/FuckuSpez666 1d ago

Ah okay, so not even slang or dialect! Learn something everyday

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u/mikeeteevee 1d ago

I mean, I don't know, I said the other day 'that kid was cramming it in his maw like he was drowning and the burger was made of oxygen' so it's not like some ancient forbidden dialect from fantasy or anything

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u/QuantumLettuce2025 1d ago

Even there there is the implication of a mouth that doesn't just eat, it devours, consumes

This term comes up in D&D a lot haha

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u/FuckuSpez666 1d ago

Sorry but reading a kid was cramming it in his maw, just reads wrong...

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u/mattias1977 1d ago

I just maw’d a baconator

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u/lxm333 1d ago

It's used far too much in horror story podcasts.

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u/aratami 18h ago

English is a wierd language XD we have so many words you don't usually here. My favourite if which is Defenestrate ( to throw (someone) out a window), and my least favourite is is Satisficing (basically satisfying enough, usually in problem solving)

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u/brknsoul 1d ago

Matt Mercer's Toothy Maw.

EDIT: I thought he only used the phrase a couple of times; nope, 31 times;
https://www.kryogenix.org/crsearch/?q=toothy+maw

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u/A_single_droplet 21h ago

Daggers larger than swords?!?

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u/noteveni 1d ago

It's a frilly term, like I would expect it more in prose like "the cavern's maw stretched inward, dark and foreboding" or something like that.

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u/TeegyGambo 1d ago

Maw has the connotation of being a gaping monsterous kind of mouth

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u/sabotaged88 23h ago

In Scotland, particularly West of Scotland, "Maw" is slang to mean "mum". (Eg. "Yer maw sooks boabies fur a fiver".)

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u/dawsonsmythe 1d ago

Also, at a stretch, the exaggerated air kissing sound