shave
/ˈʃeɪ̯v/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.83 in modern English
11
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To make (the head, skin etc.) bald or (the hair) shorter by using a tool such as a razor or electric clippers to cut the hair close to the skin.
Transitive verb
verb
To be hard and severe in a bargain with; to practice extortion on; to cheat.
Archaic; Transitive verb
verb
To buy (a note) at a discount greater than the legal rate of interest, or to deduct in discounting it more than the legal rate allows.
American usage; Dated; Slang; Transitive verb
Example Sentences
- "The Lab'rer vvith the bending Scythe is ſeen / Shaving the Surface of the vvaving Green; […]"
- "I had little time to shave this morning."
- "Now shaves with level wing the deep."
- "[…] I watched for sunken stones; I was learning to clap my teeth smartly before my heart flew out, when I shaved by a fluke some infernal sly old snag that would have ripped the life out of the tin–pot steamboat and drowned all the pilgrims; […]"
- "Kingsman’s two-hour 20-minute running time could have been shaved by around a fifth, without losing a great deal."
- "The acceleration was impressive, and these trains should allow TfW to look at shaving a few minutes off schedules here and there in the fullness of time, […]."
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English shaven, schaven, from Old English sċafan (“to shave, scrape, shred, polish”), from Proto-West Germanic *skaban, from Proto-Germanic *skabaną (“to scrape”), from Proto-Indo-European *skabʰ- (“to cut, split, form, carve”). Cognate with West Frisian skave, Dutch schaven, Low German schaven, German schaben, Danish skave, Norwegian Nynorsk skava, Swedish skava, Icelandic skafa, Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌰𐌱𐌰𐌽 (skaban), all roughly “to scrape, chafe, shave, plane, remove the outer lay of”.