Making the typical sound that a cat makes—a high-pitched vocalization used to communicate with humans and other animals.
From Middle English 'mowen,' which is onomatopoetic, imitating the actual sound cats produce. The word is found in similar forms across Germanic languages.
Cats rarely meow at each other—they mostly use meows specifically to communicate with humans, which suggests they've learned over domestication that meowing is the sound that gets our attention, making it a cross-species conversation tool cats invented.
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