saw

CEFRB1

/sɔː/

noun · verb

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    A tool with a toothed blade used for cutting.

  2. 02

    verb

    Past tense of see; noticed or viewed something.

Examples

  • I saw a couple of men get out.

  • When I left the train station, I saw a man.

At a glance

Sits at B1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
2
Citations
5
Synonyms
5

Also pronounced

  • /sɑl/
  • /soː/

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. A musical saw.

  2. A tool used for cutting hard substances, in particular wood or metal., Such a tool with an abrasive coating instead of teeth.

  3. A tool with a toothed blade used for cutting hard substances, in particular wood or metal.

More examples

In context

  • I never saw a red fridge.

  • to saw boards or planks (i.e. to saw logs or timber into boards or planks)

  • The timber saws smoothly.

Synonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The carpenter used a blank to cut the wooden board into two pieces.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

Cognate with West Frisian seage (“saw”), Dutch zaag (“saw”), German Säge (“saw”), Danish sav (“saw”), Faroese, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk sag (“saw”), Swedish såg (“saw”), Icelandic sög (“saw”), and through Indo-European, with Latin secō (“cut”) and Italian sega (“saw”). The verb from Middle English sawen, from the noun above.