callow

Meanings

Adjective

• Bald, hairless, bare.
• Unfledged (of a young bird), featherless.
• Newly emerged or hatched, juvenile.
• Immature, lacking in life experience.
• Lacking color or firmness (of some kinds of insects or other arthropods, such as spiders, just after ecdysis); teneral.
• Shallow or weak-willed.
• Unburnt.
• Of land: low-lying and liable to be submerged.

Noun

• A callow young bird.
• A callow or teneral phase of an insect or other arthropod, typically shortly after ecdysis, while the skin still is hardening, the colours have not yet become stable, and as a rule, before the animal is able to move effectively.
• An alluvial flat.

Origin

• From Middle English calwe, from Old English calu, from Proto-West Germanic *kalu, from Proto-Germanic *kalwaz, from Proto-Indo-European *gelH-. Cognate with West Frisian keal, Dutch kaal, German Low German kahl, German kahl, Swedish kal and kalka, Russian го́лый. Latin calvus, Persian کل, and Sanskrit कुल्व are probably false cognates.