gnaw
Example Sentences
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What’s missing, and might well gnaw at a viewer, is whether regenerative farming can feed the world.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 2, 2026
Outside, beavers gnaw at the vegetation around the chilly waters.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 15, 2024
While beetles gnaw away and burrow through the phloem under the trees' bark, the much smaller, flightless adelgid sucks out the trees' fluids and leaves behind a toxic saliva.
From Science Daily ● May 14, 2024
And those spectacular surface catacombs and arches will collapse to leave extensive areas of submerged ice that will then rise up under their own buoyancy to gnaw away at the berg's edges.
From BBC ● Jan. 15, 2024
First, because the lack of sleep was making him delirious, and second, because a crazy goat had chewed free from his tether and was following Finn around, trying to gnaw off his back pockets.
From "Bone Gap" by Laura Ruby
Artificial intelligence could be the boogeyman that gnaws at market share.
From Barron's ● Feb. 4, 2026
One man gnaws at a fleshless bone, clearly desperate for food.
From BBC ● Jan. 25, 2025
The creature lifts its head, nearly dainty in scale, and contentedly gnaws a mouthful of ferns.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 15, 2024
He’s a good physical comedian, especially when he gnaws a breath mint like a bunny.
From New York Times ● Mar. 16, 2023
The parrot hops down to the desk, kicks around some of the mess, and when he finds no pen, he gnaws off a blue-green feather from his back.
From "Challenger Deep" by Neal Shusterman
Sponsor Nike has even started to dress him in nice clothes, though I’m not sure what to do with that macrame-style warm-up jacket, which looks like it spent a winter getting gnawed by moths.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 12, 2026
Trees have been gnawed and felled and the water levels are much higher than when we visited previously.
From BBC ● Aug. 13, 2024
When she was a vegan-curious teenager, it gnawed at her that giving up animal products could mean sacrificing sports.
From Salon ● Jul. 15, 2024
She introduced herself and asked him the questions that had gnawed at her for years: Was there a second snake?
From Los Angeles Times ● May 29, 2024
He slept, snoring, on his folded blanket most of the day, and it was the toddlers who grabbed and gnawed.
From "Son" by Lois Lowry
As he wrote, “the body of the charter has been unfortunately gnawn by rats” — a comment that carries grim symbolism today, as we take up the task the rats left unfinished.
From Salon ● Jul. 23, 2012
Well, in attendance on my liege, your lord, I crossed the plain to its utmost margin, where The corse of Polyneices, gnawn and mauled, Was lying yet.
From Oedipus Trilogy by Francis Storr
The ferret had therefore deliberately gnawn away the hindquarters and so bored a passage.
From The Amateur Poacher by Richard Jefferies
The bones of the cutlets were decorated with pink frills- and yesterday he had gnawn ham from the bone!
From Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf
But the wolf has devoured my sow, Mine, mine, mine; My chickens are killed by the cats, My onions are gnawn by the rats; Good-bye to my dowry now.
From Basque Legends With an Essay on the Basque Language by Wentworth Webster
He rambled in his speech a while; then went mute again, wi' a new look in his eyes as though he'd grawed so auld as history in a single night.
From Lying Prophets by Eden Phillpotts
I lay that’s why your darter’s cried o’ nights, then, an’ Chris have grawed sad an’ wisht in her ways, an’ mother have pet the bwoy wan moment an’ been short wi’ un the next.”
From Children of the Mist by Eden Phillpotts
“The childer—they grawed to love me that dear—also the men an’ women.
From Children of the Mist by Eden Phillpotts
I hopes I'll hit so hard as faither hisself wan day, when I'm grawed.
From Lying Prophets by Eden Phillpotts
The “Marsh King” got up and said, “I allus telled yer yer must graw wool; but when you’ve grawed it, yer mustn’t sit on it, yer must sell it.”
From Tennyson and His Friends by Various
Citrus greening disease is caused by a bacterial infection that is delivered by the gnawing of the Asian citrus psyllid.
From Slate ● Apr. 20, 2026
Healthcare, housing, car payments, groceries and energy bills are the costs really gnawing at wallets, according to an analysis from the trade organization.
From MarketWatch ● Mar. 19, 2026
Nothing prepared me for the gnawing unease of pivoting from saving to spending.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 12, 2026
A parade worker quickly pulled down the sign, but the statement made its mark, cutting through conversations about recovery and progress with the gnawing questions that continue to haunt so many Eaton fire survivors:
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 9, 2026
If you feel a gnawing at your bones, that is only yourself, hungry.
From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver
Vocabulary lists containing gnaw
The Silent Treatment: Words Plagued by Silent Letters
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Unit 1: Telling Details
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Where the Red Fern Grows
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