[Back-formation from YAWS apprehended as a plural.] Each of the excrescences or spots of eruption in yaws.
1744. Med. Essays Soc. Edinb., V. II. 793. Sometimes after all the other Yaws are fallen off … there remains one large Yaw, high knobbed, red and moist; this is commonly called the Master-yaw.
1888. Encycl. Brit., XXIV. 732/2. Hairs at the seat of a yaw turn white.
1898. P. Manson, Trop. Diseases, xxvii. 427. The crust which caps and encloses an uninjured yaw is yellowish.
b. Used as attrib. form of YAWS, as yaw matter, taint, tubercle; yaw-house, a hospital for persons affected with yaws; yaw-weed, a shrubby plant, Morinda Royoc (N. O. Cinchonaceæ), used in the West Indies as a remedy for yaws.
1679. Trapham, Disc. Health Jamaica, 122. The … long Guinny Worms, arising from the Yaw teint found … in the Children … of the Blacks.
1822–7. Good, Study Med. (1829), III. 171. The revolting scene of a yaw-house.
1834. Good’s Study Med. (ed. 4), II. 433, note. The time that elapses between the inoculation with yaw matter and the first appearance of a yaw tubercle.
1864. Grisebach, Flora W. Ind. Isl., 789. Yaw-weed, Morinda Royoc.
