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stave

Pronunciation: /steɪv/

The English word “stave” has 15 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. 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.
  2. One of the bars or rounds of a rack, rungs of a ladder, etc; one of the cylindrical bars of a lantern wheel
  3. A metrical portion; a stanza; a staff.
  4. The set of five horizontal and parallel lines on and between which musical notes are written or pointed; the staff.
  5. The initial consonant, consonant cluster, or vowel of a word which rhymes with another word with the same consonant or vowel in stave-rhyme.
  6. A sign, symbol or sigil, including rune or rune-like characters, used in Icelandic magic.
  7. A staff or walking stick.

verb

  1. To fit or furnish with staves or rundles.
  2. To break in the staves of; to break a hole in; to burst.
  3. To push, or keep off, as with a staff.
  4. To delay by force or craft; to drive away.
  5. To burst in pieces by striking against something.
  6. To walk or move rapidly.
  7. To suffer, or cause to be lost by breaking the cask.
  8. To render impervious or solid by driving with a calking iron.

Etymology

Back-formation from staves, the plural of staff.

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.