A wooden framework or sawhorse; a stand used to hold wood while it is being sawed or worked.
Possibly a variant or corruption of sawhorse, or from balk (a large wooden beam) + horse. The term appears sporadically in English woodworking vocabulary, though its exact etymology is disputed by linguists. May have regional or dialect origins.
Bawhorse is one of those words that might be entirely made up by one person, get written down, and confuse scholars forever—it could be a regional dialect term that barely anyone used!
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