waive

English

Pronunciation

  • enPR: wāv, IPA(key): /weɪv/
  • Rhymes: -eɪv
  • Homophone: wave

Etymology 1

From Middle English weyven, from Anglo-Norman weyver (to abandon, allow to become a waif), from weyf (waif).

Verb

waive (third-person singular simple present waives, present participle waiving, simple past and past participle waived)

  1. (obsolete) To outlaw (someone).
  2. (obsolete) To abandon, give up (someone or something).
    • 1851, Alexander Mansfield Burrill, Law Dictionary and Glossary:
      but she might be waived, and held as abandoned.
  3. (transitive, law) To relinquish (a right etc.); to give up claim to; to forego.
    If you waive the right to be silent, anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.
    • c. 1390, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, The Manciple’s Tale:
      Lat take a cat, and fostre hym wel with milk, / And tendre flessh, and make his couche of silk, / And lat hym seen a mous go by the wal, / Anon he weyveth milk and flessh and al […].
  4. (now rare) To put aside, avoid.
    • a. 1683, Isaac Barrow, Sermon LIX, “Of obedience to our spiritual guides and governors”:
      [] seeing in many such occasions of common life we advisedly do renounce or waive our own opinions, absolutely yielding to the direction of others
Derived terms
Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle English weyven, from Old Norse veifa (to wave, swing) (Norwegian veiva), from Proto-Germanic *waibijaną.

Verb

waive (third-person singular simple present waives, present participle waiving, simple past and past participle waived)

  1. (obsolete) To move from side to side; to sway.
  2. (intransitive, obsolete) To stray, wander.
    • c. 1390, Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Merchant’s Tale”, Canterbury Tales:
      ye been so ful of sapience / That yow ne liketh, for youre heighe prudence, / To weyven fro the word of Salomon.
Translations

Etymology 3

From Anglo-Norman waive, probably as the past participle of weyver, as Etymology 1, above.

Noun

waive (plural waives)

  1. (obsolete, law) A woman put out of the protection of the law; an outlawed woman.
  2. (obsolete) A waif; a castaway.
    • John Donne
      [] what a wretched, and disconsolate hermitage is that house, which is not visited by thee, and what a waive and stray is that man, that hath not thy marks upon him?
Translations

Anagrams

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