| / English Dictionary |
PAWN
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Borrowing and leaving an article as security for repayment of the loan
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("pawn" is a kind of...):
borrowing (obtaining funds from a lender)
Derivation:
pawn (leave as a guarantee in return for money)
Sense 2
Meaning:
(chess) the least powerful piece; moves only forward and captures only to the side; it can be promoted to a more powerful piece if it reaches the 8th rank
Classified under:
Nouns denoting man-made objects
Hypernyms ("pawn" is a kind of...):
chess piece; chessman (any of 16 white and 16 black pieces used in playing the game of chess)
Domain category:
chess; chess game (a board game for two players who move their 16 pieces according to specific rules; the object is to checkmate the opponent's king)
Sense 3
Meaning:
A person used by another to gain an end
Synonyms:
cat's-paw; instrument; pawn
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("pawn" is a kind of...):
assistant; help; helper; supporter (a person who contributes to the fulfillment of a need or furtherance of an effort or purpose)
Sense 4
Meaning:
An article deposited as security
Classified under:
Nouns denoting possession and transfer of possession
Hypernyms ("pawn" is a kind of...):
pledge (a deposit of personal property as security for a debt)
Derivation:
pawn (leave as a guarantee in return for money)
II. (verb)
Verb forms
Present simple: I / you / we / they pawn ... he / she / it pawns
Past simple: pawned
Past participle: pawned
-ing form: pawning
Sense 1
Meaning:
Leave as a guarantee in return for money
Example:
pawn your grandfather's gold watch
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Verbs of buying, selling, owning
Hypernyms (to "pawn" is one way to...):
charge; consign (give over to another for care or safekeeping)
Domain category:
commerce; commercialism; mercantilism (transactions (sales and purchases) having the objective of supplying commodities (goods and services))
Sentence frame:
Somebody ----s something
Derivation:
pawn (borrowing and leaving an article as security for repayment of the loan)
pawn (an article deposited as security)
Context examples:
And when he answered, he told her recklessly that he had not been to see her because his best clothes were in pawn.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Later on he pawned his watch, and still later his wheel, reducing the amount available for food by putting stamps on all his manuscripts and sending them out.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Editors and publishers contributed to the daily heap of letters, the former on their knees for his manuscripts, the latter on their knees for his books—his poor disdained manuscripts that had kept all he possessed in pawn for so many dreary months in order to fund them in postage.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Driven to shifts in order to see Ruth, and deciding that the long walk from north Oakland to her house and back again consumed too much time, he kept his black suit in pawn in place of his bicycle.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
A pauper himself, a slave to the money-lender, he knew himself the superior of those he met at the Morses'; and, when his one decent suit of clothes was out of pawn, he moved among them a lord of life, quivering with a sense of outrage akin to what a prince would suffer if condemned to live with goat-herds.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
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