flew

Pluralflews

1. 1
   verb

   Past tense of fly.

   The plane flew above the clouds for most of the journey.

   A flock of geese flew over the lake at dawn.

   Note

   Old English flēag stands behind it, by way of Middle English flew: a Germanic past-tense form of the verb meaning "to fly." It serves the simple past only (the geese flew). Perfect constructions take the participle instead, so the plane has flown, never has flew. The spelling is shared by unrelated words, among them the dog's hanging lip and a dialect word for "shallow".

2. 2
   noun

   The thick, dangling upper lip of certain dog breeds, or the part of a dog's mouth that corresponds to the upper lip.

   The judge peeled back the flews to inspect the boxer's bite.

   Breeders prize the deep, pendulous flews seen in bloodhounds.

   Similarjowls, lips

   Note

   Dog owners usually speak in the plural, as in a bloodhound's flews, meaning the loose lip as a whole. The singular appears when a hand takes hold of one side. In Jonathan Kellerman's Bad Love (1994), a man lifts a flew to check the dog's teeth. The word's origin is unknown, so its likeness to the past tense of fly is coincidence, not kinship.

3. 3
   adjectivedialectalUK

   Having little depth; shallow or flat.

   The old miller kept his grain in flew wooden trays stacked on the shelf.

   The cows cross at the ford, where the water is flew enough to show the stones.

   Similarshallow, flat

   Oppositedeep

   Note

   Regional British speech keeps this word, but the standard language does not. As an adjective it compares with more and most (more flew, most flew) rather than taking -er and -est. Outside the dialect, readers will almost always read it first as the past tense of fly. In general writing, shallow or flat says the same thing without the stumble.

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