An archaic or dialect form meaning to cause to lose courage or to terrify; an obsolete variant of 'dismay'.
An older spelling variant of 'dismay' (from Old French 'desmayer'), preserved in some dialects. The '-aw' ending suggests Scottish or Northern English influence where 'aw' represented the vowel sound /ɔː/.
This word is basically fossilized—it exists mainly in old poems and historical texts, showing how English spelling standardized over time. You'll find 'dismaw' in works by Scottish poets, a linguistic time capsule of how different regions pronounced the same word.
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