shelve
Formsshelves, shelving, shelved
Formsshelves, shelving, shelved
Pluralshelves
- 1To put something on a shelf, most often books that are being put away or arranged in order.
The clerk shelved the returned volumes in alphabetical order.
Volunteers shelve donated paperbacks every Saturday morning.
Note
The everyday library verb. Books are shelved once they have been catalogued and marked, which is how Walter Scott planned to handle his new acquisitions in 1827. The object is now the item rather than the room; compare fitting a place with shelves. Taking things back down has its own pair of verbs, unshelve and deshelve.
- 2To postpone or set aside a matter or project, or stop dealing with it entirely.
Management chose to shelve the merger after the talks collapsed.
The committee shelved the proposal indefinitely.
Similarpostpone, table, halt, stop, pigeonhole
Note
The figurative sense most readers meet first, and it often appears in the passive: schemes and projects are shelved. Dickens gives it to his Circumlocution Office, which shelved the business rather than decide it. Shelving is not always final, though. A Bergen–Oslo railway electrification scheme shelved by 1950 was completed in 1964. Mothball and pigeonhole share that hint of a later return; halt and stop do not.
- 3To make someone stop serving in an active role.
The general shelved the officer pending the investigation.
Teams often shelve veterans who can no longer keep pace.
Similarsideline, suspend, bench, drop
Oppositereinstate
Note
Here the thing set aside is a person, and the word carries the sting of polite dismissal. In Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Alice, or The Mysteries (1838), a man is determined not to be "shelved with a plausible excuse of tender compassion for his infirmities." The verb is most natural in the passive. It can also be reflexive: someone who shelves himself withdraws from active service.
- 4To fit a place with shelves, especially to fit a library with bookshelves.
The contractor shelved the new reading room over two weekends.
Builders shelve the alcoves before the cabinets go in.
Note
A verb pulled out of a plural: shelves, the plural of shelf, was read as if it were a verb form, and shelve was formed backward from it. The same origin lies behind most of this word's senses. Here the object is the space being fitted, not the things that will go in it. You shelve a closet or a library when you put the shelves up, before a single book arrives.
- 5To slope, as a shore or sandbank does where it runs down into deeper water.
The shoreline shelves gradually into deeper water.
Wide sandbanks shelve out below the tideline.
Similarslope, incline, slant, dip
Note
The member of the shelven family that is still in use, and it is at home in modern prose: Anthony Burgess writes in 1958 that "the sand shelved gently here." It usually comes with a word of direction or degree, as in shelve gently, shelve down or shelve toward the deep. It suits shores, beaches and hillsides, where the ground falls away gradually rather than dropping sheer.
- 6To place something in a particular spot, as though putting it on a shelf.
Climbers shelve their packs on a narrow ledge before the final scramble to the summit.
The waiter had shelved three plates along his forearm before he left the kitchen.
Note
A loosened version of putting things on actual shelves: something is still set down and left in place, but no shelf is needed. A ledge, a windowsill or an arm will do. Because the verb was formed from shelves, the plural of shelf, the picture of a flat resting place stays with it. When what is set aside is a plan rather than an object, the word has moved on to the sense of postponing.
- 7A rocky ledge or shelf projecting from a cliff, mountain, or similar height.
The eagles nested on a high shelve of bare stone.
Water dripped from the mossy shelve above the cave mouth.
Note
A noun drawn from the overhanging verb, and in practice a poet's word. Keats sets Enceladus on "a crag's uneasy shelve" in Hyperion, and Scott's Bruce treads "the black shelves" in The Lord of the Isles (1815). Its plural looks exactly like the plural of shelf, so only the singular gives it away. It suits writing that wants an older flavor; in plain prose, ledge does the work.
- 8To project or hang over something, like a shelf.
Heavy boughs shelve above the forest path.
Her chamber is aloft, far from the ground, / And built ſo ſheluing, that one cannot climbe it / VVithout apparent hazard of his life.
c. 1590, William Shakespeare, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”Note
Shakespeare's verb for building that juts out beyond reach. In The Two Gentlemen of Verona (c. 1590–1591), a lady's chamber is "built so shelving, that one cannot climb it": the structure overhangs, so no one can scale it. The verb takes no object; a thing simply shelves. The noun for a rocky ledge grew from this sense. Modern English says overhang or jut, so this use now reads only as period color.
- 9To rest or lie in an inclined or sloping position.
Note
The stative partner of the sloping-land verb. Where that one describes ground falling away, this one described a thing simply lying at a tilt. It has dropped out of use. For a slanting rock or a hull on its side, modern English says slope, lean or tilt instead.
- 10Alternative spelling of shelf.
And all was stillness, save the sea-bird's cry, / And dolphin's leap, and little billow crost / By some low rock or shelve, that made it fret / Against the boundary it scarcely wet.
1819, [Lord Byron], Don JuanBut upon inquiry among the company, this plan was wrecked upon the ordinary shelve, to wit, the difficulty of finding performers who would consent to assume the lower characters of the drama.
1823, [Walter Scott], “Theatricals”Note
A spelling made the same way as the shelf-fitting verb: backward from the plural shelves, here the plural of shelf in its seafaring sense of reef or sandbar. Ships ran aground on it. John Speed, writing in 1611, has a galleass drive "upon a shelve in the shoare of Callis." In St Ronan's Well, Walter Scott wrecks a plan "upon the ordinary shelve," the hidden obstacle a scheme runs aground on.
- 11To unload a cart by tilting it until its contents are discharged.
- 12To take drugs by inserting them into the rectum or vagina.
- 13To have sexual intercourse with someone.
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Practice
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Origins
The verb is a back-formation from "shelves," the plural of "shelf," meaning a flat, rigid structure used to store or support objects. The noun comes from an obsolete sense meaning to hang over or project like a shelf.
From Late Middle English "shelven" ("to separate someone or something from another thing, keep away"). The earlier origin is uncertain: possibly from "shelf" (though the Oxford English Dictionary doubts this), or perhaps related to West Frisian "skelf" ("not level or straight, oblique").
This is treated as a singular form of "shelves," the plural of "shelf" in the sense of a reef, sandbar, or shoal.