awe

noun

1. 1

   A feeling of fear and reverence.

   Last spring, the periodical cicadas emerged across eastern North America. Their vast numbers and short above-ground life spans inspired awe and irritation in humans—and made for good meals for birds and small mammals.

2. 2

   A feeling of amazement.

   For several minutes no one spoke; I think they must each have been as overcome by awe as was I. All about us was a flora and fauna as strange and wonderful to us as might have been those upon a distant planet had we suddenly been miraculously transported through ether to an unknown world.

   In 1825, the first public railway carried passengers across the English countryside, setting in motion not just an engineering revolution, but an industrial one too. Imagine the awe and excitement of those first passengers as they boarded the train, unaware that they were witnessing the dawn of a new era.

3. 3

   archaicPower to inspire awe.

verb

1. 1

   To inspire fear and reverence in.

   That large room had always awed Ivor: even as a child he had never wanted to play in it, for all that it was so limitless, the parquet floor so vast and shiny and unencumbered, the windows so wide and light with the fairy expanse of Kensington Gardens.

2. 2

   To control by inspiring dread.

   While a sense of outrage is the only rational response to atrocity, if that outrage is maintained at too high a level over too long a time it can generate feelings of impotence, as we permit ourselves to be awed by this irrational act of violence.

noun

1. 1

   obsoleteA bucket (blade) attached to water wheels.

Forms

plural

awes

past tense

awed

past participle

awed

present participle

awing, aweing

third person singular

awes