An archaic or dialectal exclamation used to express surprise, pain, or to call attention.
An onomatopoetic or exclamatory form from Middle English, likely combining 'ew' (an exclamation of pain) with 'how' or similar. The exact origin is uncertain.
This word appears so rarely in historical texts that its exact meaning and usage are somewhat mysterious—it's almost like finding a linguistic fossil that we can't quite reconstruct the context for.
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