Chaw has a wide range of senses in regional expressions. One Northern and Western meaning of the verb is “to bawl someone out”: He chawed her good. A Southern sense is “to get the best of someone in a bantering contest” or simply “to embarrass”: “That compliment sort of chawed me” (Publication of the American Dialect Society). The noun chaw can mean “a twist of chewing tobacco” or “an attachment or hold (on someone)”; for example, a flirtatious woman in Tennessee is “tryin' to git a chaw on a feller” (Dialect Notes).
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