Meanings
- stewing, very hot and wet
Then every day has its afternoon shower, the air is heavy and stifling, all the tropic world is asteam and astew and afloat, vegetation is magnificent, insect life triumphant, and the mountains are hidden in nearly perpetual mist.
1897, Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore, “In ‘Java Major’” (chapter II), in Java: The Garden of the East, The Century Co., page 18 - stewing, in a state of agitation
I, having the fishing germs cultivated a little more than my pals, was all astew to be out on the lake[…].
1916 June 29, R. L. Medill, “The Way We Did It”, in Hunter-Trader-Trapper, volume XXXII, number 3, page 271 more example
In the meantime the courts, all astew about publicity, have barely begun to use their resources to remedy the real wrong[…].
1990 November 13, “Rash Censors in the Noriega Case”, in The New York Times, retrieved 16 Sep 2025
Origin
From a- + stew (“to suffer under uncomfortably hot conditions; to be in a state of elevated anxiety or anger”).
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Rhymes with astew
All rhymes →Anagrams
Cite this entry
astew. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/astew
“astew.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/astew. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “astew,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/astew.
Source: astew on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.