lave
/leɪv/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.23 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
Of a river or other water body: to flow along or past (a place or thing); to wash.
Transitive verb
verb
Followed by into, on, or upon: to pour (water or some other liquid) with or as if with a ladle into or on someone or something; to lade, to ladle.
Transitive verb
Example Sentences
- "[M]y houſe vvithin the City / Is richly furniſhed vvith plate and gold, / Baſons and evvers to laue her dainty hands: […]"
- "[W]e muſt laue / Our Honors in theſe flattering ſtreames, / And make our Faces Vizards to our Hearts, / Diſguiſing vvhat they are."
- "VVith Nectar pure his oozy Lock's he laves."
- "[F]rom my vveary'd limbs I lave / The foul pollution of the briny vvave: […]"
- "Thanks be to God! He laveth the thirsty land! The waters gather; they rush along; they are lifting their voices."
- "Rita stripped in haste and padded out to the wash-basin and lathered her body all over and laved it several times in fresh water before feeling she had washed off it a contact with Mrs Dibble's dirty old carcass, which shocked the self-esteem of her own shapely body."
Etymology
The verb is derived from Middle English laven (“to bathe, wash; to bail or draw water, drain, exhaust; to dampen, wet; to pour; of water, etc.: to flow, stream”), and then partly: * from Old French laver (“to be washed; to wash”) (modern French laver (“to wash (oneself)”)), from Latin lavāre, the present active infinitive of lavō (“to bathe, wash; to dampen, wet”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *lewh₃- (“to wash”); and * from Old English lafian (“to bathe; to make wet; to ladle out; to pour”), from Proto-West Germanic *labōn (“to refresh, revitalize; to strengthen”); further etymology uncertain, possibly from Latin lavō (see above) but this does not explain the change in meaning from “to wash; to wet” to “to refresh; to strengthen”. Perhaps Old English lafian is derived directly from the Latin word, and Proto-West Germanic *labōn and words in languages derived from it such as Dutch and German are coincidentally similar to the Old English word. The noun is derived from the verb.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /leɪv/
- British English: /leɪv/
Usage
Inflected Forms
laves (present, singular)
laving (participle, present)
laved (participle, past)
laved (past)
no-table-tags (table tags)
glossary (inflection template)
laved (first person, past)
lavest (archaic, present)
laved (past, second person)
lavedst (archaic, past)
laveth (archaic, present)
laved (past, singular)