Synonyms
Examples of saw in a Sentence
Matt Donnelly, Variety, 1 Apr. 2024
Runaway blade: An Oregon man narrowly escaped serious injury when a metal blade from a concrete saw came loose at a nearby construction site.
—Daniel Wine, CNN, 1 Apr. 2024
Seconds later, before the door can even fully close behind him, a huge, circular saw blade can be seen barrelling across the parking lot, lodging itself into the side of the building where Reimche had been just seconds before.
—USA TODAY, 1 Apr. 2024
Video of the incident shows the man entering the store mere seconds before a large saw blade rolls quickly in his direction from across the parking lot.
—Mirna Alsharif, NBC News, 31 Mar. 2024
While the saws screeched, men would mix cement in five-gallon buckets to be poured into the neatly squared divots in the road.
—William Wan, Washington Post, 30 Mar. 2024
With a cacophony of saws, nail guns and heavily accented (but good-natured) bickering and ribbing among the siblings and the crew, the magic happens over and over.
—Olivia McCormack, Washington Post, 18 Mar. 2024
Police fatally shot a man who was armed with a saw inside a Home Depot in Fontana on Monday night, authorities said.
—Hannah Fry, Los Angeles Times, 27 Feb. 2024
The few gas stations that were open saw lines stretching for several blocks long.
—Samantha Schmidt, Washington Post, 9 Mar. 2024
Ivan Nechepurenko, New York Times, 23 Mar. 2024
The workers sawed through flexible yellow gas hose, pulled it from the walls and hauled it out to the sidewalk.
—Jeff Brady, NPR, 4 Mar. 2024
The sawing crews operating around Lukeville have been especially brazen.
—Nick Miroff, Washington Post, 20 Dec. 2023
Doctors struggled to save his life, and to do so, sawed off his left leg.
—Toby Muse, Rolling Stone, 3 Mar. 2024
The writer Lauren Groff, who moved to the state 18 years ago, recalled another Florida meme, in which someone saws the dangling state off the map.
—Patricia Mazzei Jason Andrew, New York Times, 25 Feb. 2024
Just don’t blame me when your kids start trying to saw the furniture in half at home.
—Laura Parker, Forbes, 16 Feb. 2024
Then, in 2021, they were suddenly removed overnight by a landscape contractor who — to the horror of preservationists — sawed them off at the knees to conduct a water main repair, leaving behind only their little hooves.
—Curbed, 12 Jan. 2024
The shell is stiff and leathery, requiring a bit of sawing to open.
—Hannah Goldfield, The New Yorker, 8 Jan. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'saw.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
Noun (1)
Middle English sagh, sawe, going back to Old English sagu (strong feminine noun), going back to Germanic *sagō (whence also Middle Dutch sage "saw," Old High German saga, Old Icelandic sǫg) beside *segō (whence Middle Dutch sege "saw," Old High German sega), noun derivatives from a dialectal Indo-European verbal base *sek- "cut," whence also Middle Irish tescaid "(s/he) cuts, severs" (regularized from a presumed verb doˑesc, perhaps from *to-eks-sk-), Latin secō, secāre "to cut, sever, make an incision," Old Church Slavic sěkǫ, sěšti "to cut down, fell, hew," Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian sijèčēm, sjȅći "to cut, chop, hew"
Note: The base *sek- is peculiar to northwest (or European) Indo-European, being attested in Celtic, Italic, Germanic, and Slavic; *sek- is perhaps ultimately the same base as *skeh2-, *skh2- "cut open, flay"; see etymology and note at science.
Verb
Middle English sawen, derivative of sawe saw entry 2
Noun
Middle English sawe, from Old English sagu discourse; akin to Old High German & Old Norse saga tale, Old English secgan to say — more at say entry 1
Noun (1)
before the 12th century, in the meaning defined above
Verb
13th century, in the meaning defined at transitive sense 1
Noun
before the 12th century, in the meaning defined above
Phrases Containing saw
Dictionary Entries Near saw
Cite this Entry
“Saw.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/saw. Accessed 18 Apr. 2024.
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More from Merriam-Webster on saw
Nglish: Translation of saw for Spanish Speakers
Britannica English: Translation of saw for Arabic Speakers
Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about saw
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