To jaw-jaw is always better than to paw-paw?

What do you understand Churchill's quote to mean?

Jaw-jaw means to talk.

What does paw-paw mean?

It sounds ridiculous. "Jaw-jaw" meaning extended talking was already archaic in the 1940s. Paw-paw is a fruit.

Possibly it means pawing at one another in the manner of tired boxers. In that case, talking might be better than fighting.

Apparently the "editor" wanted it to mean "fight fight/war war." Has he completely failed in the attempt?

Thank you Roger.
Yeah, fighting with your paw if you were a tiger.
Would you like to rewrite the sentence according to your opinion?

Churchill was making a wry joke. He was rhyming jaw with war which was possible because in upper British circles WAR was pronounced WAh,

It should stay as you have it:
It is better to jaw-jaw than to war-war. That means talk is better than fighting.

Joe(good day)Nation

It still is. That is an explanation for people who are used to rhotic pronunciation; in most Southern and Eastern English (including "upper class") and Welsh dialects and a few Scottish, the final r of war would be silent or nearly so, so yes, war would rhyme with jaw, law, paw, etc

Ah. So far from my standard (mostly) Midwestern English pronunciation that I didn't realize in Churchillian it would rhyme. I'm with the don't rewrite it crowd. "Paw-paw" would be pretty obscure (I've always heard the fruit pronounced "pawpaw" but spelled "papaw" for some reason).

I'm sorry Joe, but to back up what Contrex was saying jaw and war do rhyme, (in the UK at least.) Do you pronounce jaw, jah?

Within the English speaking world, there are a number of important variations in pronunciation, and one of the most noticeable by its presence (or absence) is "rhotic pronunciation". That is, sounding the letter R when it occurs part way through a word or at the end, in words such as card, dark, permission, war, car, large, and so on. Everybody, as far as I know, sounds initial Rs in e.g. road, rage, real, rabbit.

If your accent is non-rhotic, jaw and war would probably rhyme.

Areas with non-rhotic accents include Australia, most of the Caribbean, most of England (including Received Pronunciation speakers), most of New Zealand, Wales, Hong Kong, Singapore and areas of South Africa.

Rhotic pronunciation has vanished from British, Southern, "upper-class" and "received" speech, but it is still very much alive in south western English accents. Scotland and Ireland still have it. It is how Brits think all Americans speak.

Canada is entirely rhotic except for small isolated areas in southwestern New Brunswick, parts of Newfoundland, and the Lunenburg English variety spoken in Lunenburg and Shelburne Counties, Nova Scotia.

In the United States, much of the South was once non-rhotic, but in recent decades non-rhotic speech has declined. Today, non-rhoticity in Southern American English is found primarily among older speakers, and only in some areas such as central and southern Alabama, Savannah, Georgia, and Norfolk, Virginia, as well as in the y'at accent of New Orleans. Parts of New England, especially Boston, are non-rhotic, as are New York City and surrounding areas. African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is largely non-rhotic.

England: green is non-rhotic


Some of the US: red shows areas of non-rhoticity


As for "jaw-jaw is perferable to paw-paw", that is clearly nonsense.

I have seen paw-paw with and without hyphen or space.

Just as Brits think of US rhotic speech like this: "Get in the carrrrr, Marrrk", so rhotic yanks think Brits say "Get in the cah, Mahk".