the.com/mew
Jawline folk magic: press your tongue up and wait for cheekbones to arrive.
means The small sound a cat makes, and—by weird internet extension—the name of a tongue-posture trend claiming it'll chisel your face.
from 'Mew' started as pure sound-mimicry, echoing the thin cry of a cat (English had 'mewen' for this back in medieval times, and languages worldwide have their own near-identical version, because cats sound like cats everywhere). The jawline sense is a 20th-century borrowing of a surname: British orthodontist John Mew, who promoted tongue-posture theories about facial development. His ideas got picked up, renamed 'mewing' after him, and went viral — so the word now lives a double life: one meaning inherited from a cat's throat, the other from a dentist's business card.
- origin
- named after orthodontist John Mew
- claim
- promises sharper jaw via tongue posture
- evidence
- no peer-reviewed proof it reshapes bone
- side effect
- made teenagers obsessed with their tongues