stave
/steɪv/ noun, verb, proper noun
Forms staves staving staved stove stoven
- noun One of a number of narrow strips of wood, or narrow iron plates, placed edge to edge to form the sides, covering, or lining of a vessel or structure; especially, one of the strips which form the sides of a cask, barrel, pail, etc.
- noun One of the bars or rounds of a rack, rungs of a ladder, etc; one of the cylindrical bars of a lantern wheel
- noun (poetry) A metrical portion; a stanza; a staff.
- noun (music) The set of five horizontal and parallel lines on and between which musical notes are written or pointed; the staff.
- noun (poetry, rare) The initial consonant, consonant cluster, or vowel of a word which rhymes with another word with the same consonant or vowel in stave-rhyme.
- noun A sign, symbol or sigil, including rune or rune-like characters, used in Icelandic magic.
- noun A staff or walking stick.
- verb (transitive) To fit or furnish with staves or rundles.
- verb (transitive, usually with 'in') To break in the staves of; to break a hole in; to burst.
- verb (transitive, with 'off') To push, or keep off, as with a staff.
- verb (transitive, usually with 'off') To delay by force or craft; to drive away. “We ate grass in an attempt to stave off our hunger.”
- verb (intransitive, rare or archaic) To burst in pieces by striking against something.
- verb (intransitive, dated or dialect) To walk or move rapidly.
- verb To suffer, or cause to be lost by breaking the cask.
- verb To render impervious or solid by driving with a calking iron.
- proper noun A surname.
Synonyms
Etymology
Back-formation from staves, the plural of staff.
* Borrowed from North German Stave, an occupational surname for a judge or church official, from Middle Low German Staf (“staff”).
* Borrowed from Norwegian Stave, a habitational surname from five farmsteads in the country.
* Americanized form of Polish Staw, a Jewish Ashkenazi surname.
Webster’s 1913
- noun One of a number of narrow strips of wood, or narrow iron plates, placed edge to edge to form the sides, covering, or lining of a vessel or structure; esp., one of the strips which form the sides of a cask, a pail, etc.
- noun One of the cylindrical bars of a lantern wheel; one of the bars or rounds of a rack, a ladder, etc.
- verb To break in a stave or the staves of; to break a hole in; to burst; --often with in; as, to stave a cask; to stave in a boat.
- verb To push, as with a staff; --with off. The condition of a servant staves him off to a distance. South.
Etymology [From Staff, and corresponding to the pl. staves. See Staff.]
Etymology [From Stave, n., or Staff, n.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “stave”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details