Crossword clues for thews
thews
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Old English þeawes "customs, habit, manners; morals, conduct, disposition, personal qualities," plural of þeaw "habit, custom," from Proto-Germanic *thawaz (cognates: Old Saxon thau "usage, custom, habit," Old High German thau "discipline"). According to OED, with no certain cognates outside West Germanic and of unknown origin, but Watkins traces it to PIE root *teue- (1) "to pay attention." Meaning "bodily powers or parts indicating strength, good physique" is attested from 1560s, from notion of "good qualities." Acquired a sense of "muscular development" when it was revived by Scott (1818).
Wiktionary
Usage examples of "thews".
All round, her unpanelled, open bulwarks were garnished like one continuous jaw, with the long sharp teeth of the sperm whale, inserted there for pins, to fasten her old hempen thews and tendons to.
In fact, in her dreams at night this man of her future often wore the face and thews of Faldain, whose image she had once summoned by parting the veils of seeing.
Those thews ran not through base blocks of land wood, but deftly travelled over sheaves of sea-ivory.
A veritable giant, flaxen-haired and massive of thews, just like thousands more German men he had known-Burgundus!