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pow

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POW¹

noun POWs

  1. abbreviation, initialism Initialism of prisoner of war After his capture, he was taken to a camp for POWs.

    Similar: PW

  2. abbreviation, initialism Initialism of place of worship
  3. Alternative letter-case form of PoW (“proof of work”).

pow²

  • /paʊ/
  • [pəʉ] Australia

Rhymes with -aʊ

Where it comes from

Onomatopoeic.

interjection

  1. The sound of a violent impact, such as a punch. Whap, Biff, Ooooof, Sock, Pow, Zok! Batman is back. Gotham City is again leaving its law and order in the hands of a man who wears plastic underpants over his tights.
  2. The sound of an explosion or gunshot. Pow, they took off.

noun pows

  1. The sound of a violent impact.
  2. The sound of an explosion.

pow³

Where it comes from

Variant forms.

noun pows

  1. Ireland, Northern England, Scotland, alternative Alternative form of poll he'd snuffle round the door till the few remaining hairs on the bald pow of Munro would fair rise on end.
  2. abbreviation, clipping, slang Clipping of powder (“powder snow”).

PoW⁴

noun PoWs

  1. abbreviation, countable, initialism, uncountable Initialism of proof of work With PoW, as new, unverified transactions become available or broadcast to the entire blockchain network, each node that maintains a copy of the ledger (also known as a “miner”) verifies a set of those transactions to prevent so called “double spending”.
  2. abbreviation, countable, initialism Initialism of prisoner of war The communists demand the release of all prisoners detained by Saigon – not only the so-called PoWs. This distinction between “prisoners” and “prisoners of war” is significant since the great majority of the NLF members held by Saigon do not have PoW status. Until 1965 there was no such thing as a P

Pow⁵

Where it comes from

Three possible origins:

* A variant of the English surname Poe.

* Borrowed from Cantonese 包 (baau1) and 鮑 /鲍 (baau1); compare Bao, which derives from the standard Chinese pronunciation of these characters.

* Borrowed from Hokkien 傅 (pò͘); compare Fu, which derives from the standard Chinese pronunciation of these characters.

proper noun Pows

  1. A surname.

Thesaurus

Closest in meaning: mia, prisoner, captive, powwow, pam, crack, bang, pow-wow, wham, boom, bim, pan, psa, nap, wow, fap

Translations

Every language

noun abbreviation of prisoner of war

DeutschKr.Gef.

intj sound of a violent impact

Españolzas

intj sound of an explosion

Españolpum

noun sound of a violent impact

Españolzas

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Cite this
MLA

"pow." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/pow. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

pow. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/pow

Chicago

"pow." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/pow.

BibTeX
@misc{pow_2026,
  title = {pow},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/pow},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}