callow

adj

1. Of a person: having no hair; bald, bare, hairless.

   “Then there was a little Chinese in full azure costume, with long gesticulating arms, and large callow head, who pertinaciously threw in his squeaky plea for Confucius in the most unsyntactical French.”

   “There was a sense abroad as he spoke that the world was rocking together to great music, and this callow-headed professor by the table had caught a note of it.”

   “This time it held a callow-headed baby in a pink frock.”

   “These hands were marked of hard work and yet soft enough to tenderly hold the baby's little callow head.”

2. Of a brick: unburnt.
3. Of a young bird, or (part of) its body: having not developed feathers yet; featherless, unfledged; hence, of other animals or their bodies: having no fur or hair; furless, hairless, unfurred.

   “[…] Calais and Zetes had no beard upon their chin, / They both were callow. But aſſone as haire did once begin / In likeneſſe of a yellow Downe upon their cheekes to ſprout, / Then (euen as comes to paſſe in Birdes) the feathers budded out / Togither on their pinyons too, and ſpreaded round about / On both their ſides.”

   “[T]hey [who] be ſomevvhat ſlovv of apprehenſion and idle vvithall, are verie troubleſome unto their teachers, and importune them overmuch: […] reſembling herein young callovv birds vvhich are not yet fethered and fledg'd, but alvvaies gaping tovvard the bill of the damme, and ſo by their good vvils vvould have nothing given them, but that vvhich hath beene chevved and prepared already.”

   “A Snake of Size immenſe aſcends a Tree, / And in the leafie Summit, ſpy'd a Neſt, / VVhich o'er her Callovv Young, a Sparrovv preſs'd.”

   “Th' appointed Time / VVith pious Toil fulfill'd, the callovv Young / VVarm'd, and expanded into perfect Life, / Their brittle Bondage break, and come to Light, / A helpleſs Family, demanding Food / VVith conſtant Clamour.”

   “Her [the desert pelican's] young in the refreshing bath / Sported all wantonness; / Dipt down their callow heads, / Filled the swoln membrane from their plumeless throat / Pendant, […]”

4. (figuratively)Of a young bird, or (part of) its body: having not developed feathers yet; featherless, unfledged; hence, of other animals or their bodies: having no fur or hair; furless, hairless, unfurred.

   “Those three young men are particularly callow youths.”

   “Try to remember the kind of September / When you were a tender and callow fellow / Try to remember and if you remember / Then follow”

   “Bernard, there are only 630 MPs, if one party has just over 300 MPs it forms a government—of that 300, 100 are too old and too silly, 100 are too young and too callow, which leaves just about a hundred MPs to fill 100 government posts.”

   “The restless scrolling, the clammy self-reproach afterwards … we could recognise that as addiction quite easily, but the mathematical mechanism for having created it makes horrible sense ([Jaron] Lanier isn't that interested in culprits, though he finds all of Silicon Valley pretty callow).”

   “Barça [FC Barcelona] had frozen. [Trent] Alexander-Arnold saw it, caught Divock Origi's eyes and pinged the perfect cross for a double-take of a winning goal. This was a 20-year-old local lad, product of down the road, out-thinking Barcelona, making them look like callow, pigeon-chested schoolboys.”

5. (broadly)In the life cycle of an animal: newly born or hatched; juvenile.

   “a callow bee”

6. (broadly)Synonym of teneral (“of certain insects or other arthropods such as spiders: lacking colour or firmness just after ecdysis (“shedding of the exoskeleton”)”).
7. (obsolete)Of land: having no vegetation; bare.

   “[T]heſe Lands are not ſvvardy enough to bear clean tillage, nor callovv or light enough to lie to get ſvvard, […]”

8. (Ireland)Of land: low-lying and near a river, and thus regularly submerged.

   “The Bogs that extend along the western part of this District do not lie close to the Shannon, as those on the east side do along the banks of the Inny; they are separated from the river by a long tract of high, dry, callow land, subject, immediately near the river, to being overflowed in winter, but affording meadow, pasture, and in some places good arable land.”

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)Synonym of teneral (“an insect or other arthropod such as a spider which has just undergone ecdysis (“shedding of the exoskeleton”) and so lacks colour or firmness”).
2. (countable, uncountable)An alluvial flat.
3. (UK, archaic, countable, regional, uncountable)The upper layer of rubble in a quarry which has to be removed to reach the material to be mined.
4. (countable, obsolete, uncountable)A young bird which has not developed feathers yet; a nestling.
5. (countable, figuratively, obsolete, uncountable)A young bird which has not developed feathers yet; a nestling.
6. (East-Anglia, countable, obsolete, uncountable)Synonym of topsoil (“upper layer of soil”).
7. (Ireland)A low-lying meadow near a river which is regularly submerged.

   “Near-synonyms: bog, fen, marsh, swamp, mire, moor, slough”

   “The crops of hay carried off by the floods, or rendered utterly valueless, were not the only losses sustained by the landholders. The extensive callows upon which they grazed their cattle during the autumn and early winter, were unavailable this season.”

name

1. A surname.