To touch, strike, or handle something with or as if with paws; to grab clumsily with one's hands.
From 'be-' prefix + 'paw'. The 'be-' prefix combined with animal or body-part words was common in Early Modern English to create vivid action verbs suggesting crude or rough handling.
Medieval and Renaissance writers used 'bepaw' to describe animals mauling things or people handling objects roughly—it's onomatopoetic in spirit, where the word itself sounds like clumsy contact.
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