callow
Plural: callows
Adjective Satellite
- young and inexperienced
Adj
- Of a person: having no hair; bald, bare, hairless.
- Of a brick: unburnt.
- Of a young bird, or (part of) its body: having not developed feathers yet; featherless, unfledged; hence, of other animals or their bodies: having no fur or hair; furless, hairless, unfurred.
- Of a young bird, or (part of) its body: having not developed feathers yet; featherless, unfledged; hence, of other animals or their bodies: having no fur or hair; furless, hairless, unfurred.
- Lacking life experience; immature, inexperienced, naive; also, of or relating to something immature or inexperienced.
- In the life cycle of an animal: newly born or hatched; juvenile.
- Synonym of teneral (“of certain insects or other arthropods such as spiders: lacking colour or firmness just after ecdysis (“shedding of the exoskeleton”)”).
- Of land: having no vegetation; bare.
- Of land: low-lying and near a river, and thus regularly submerged.
Noun
- Synonym of teneral (“an insect or other arthropod such as a spider which has just undergone ecdysis (“shedding of the exoskeleton”) and so lacks colour or firmness”).
- An alluvial flat.
- The upper layer of rubble in a quarry which has to be removed to reach the material to be mined.
- A young bird which has not developed feathers yet; a nestling.
- A young bird which has not developed feathers yet; a nestling.
- A person lacking life experience; an immature or naive person.
- Synonym of topsoil (“upper layer of soil”).
- A low-lying meadow near a river which is regularly submerged.
Adjective
- Immature or inexperienced; lacking sophistication.
Examples
- a callow bee
- A callow player might play shorter words, not seeing the bingo opportunities.
- Those three young men are particularly callow youths.
Origin / Etymology
From Middle English calwe (“(adjective) bald; (noun) bald person”), from Old English calu, caluw (“without hair, bald, callow”), from Proto-West Germanic *kalu, from Proto-Germanic *kalwaz (“bald; bare, naked”), and then either:
* from Proto-Indo-European *gol(H)-wo- (“bald; bare, naked”), from *gelH- (“head; naked”); or
* from Latin calvus (“bald”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kl̥H- (“bald; naked”).
If not borrowed from Latin, Grimm’s law indicates that the Latin word is likely a false cognate, along with Persian کل (kal) and Sanskrit कुल्व (kulvá). Finnish kalju (“bald”), from Proto-Finnic *kaljama, may be borrowed from an unrelated Germanic word meaning “slippery”.
cognates
* Dutch kaal (“bald”)
* German kahl (“bald”)
* German Low German kahl (“bald”)
* Russian го́лый (gólyj, “bare, naked, nude”)
* Swedish kal, kalka (“bald”)
* West Frisian keal (“bald”)
Synonyms
fledgling, unfledged, Panglossian, Panglossic, artless, born yesterday, callow, childlike, clueless, credulous, cute, dewy-eyed, fleeceable, flood meadow, green, guileless, immature, ingenuous, innocent, jejune, quaint, simple, simple-hearted, simple-minded, starry-eyed, teneral, topsoil, unaffected, undesigning, unpretentious, unsophisticated, untested, unworldly, virgin, water meadow, wet behind the ears, wide-eyed
Antonyms
Scrabble Score: 11
callow: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordcallow: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
callow: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary