stave

STAYV/steɪv/

Pluralstaves

Verbstaves, staving, staved

15 meanings of stave

Practice

1
nouncountable
One of the narrow wooden strips or iron plates set edge to edge to form the sides or lining of a barrel, cask, or similar vessel.
Each stave was steamed and bent before being fitted into the barrel's frame.
The cooper replaced two rotten staves to stop the cask from leaking.
Similarslat, strip, board, lath
Note
The word began backward: stave was made from staves, the plural of staff, so the two words still share a plural. A cooper builds a barrel from staves, and the King James Bible of 1611 spells that plural staues. When staves turns up in older prose, check whether it means wooden strips or more than one staff.
2
verbtransitive
To delay or drive something away by force or cunning.
The garrison managed to stave the enemy from the walls for a week.
He staved his creditors with promises and clever excuses.
Similarrepel, repulse, fend, ward, hold
Note
The verb usually wants off after it: you stave off hunger rather than simply stave it. Brent Stransky's The Young Conservative's Field Guide (2009) still writes of seeds granted "to stave hunger," so the bare verb survives, but the phrasal form is the safe choice. It keeps a trace of the "push away" meaning: what was once held back as with a staff is now held off by effort or cunning.
A quick snack can stave off hunger until dinner.
The team fought hard to stave off defeat.
3
verbtransitive
To break a hole in something or crush its side, as by smashing in the staves of a cask.
A drifting log can stave the planks of a wooden hull.
The collision staved in the cask, spilling wine across the deck.
Similarsmash, crush, breach, puncture, hole
Note
A seafaring sense, and the one that keeps the strong past tense alive: a boat is stove in as readily as staved in. Melville uses both in one breath in Moby-Dick (1851): "a stove boat and stove body," then "stave my soul." The verb usually takes in, as in staving in a cask, and it describes damage driven inward from outside.
4
nouncountable
The set of five horizontal, parallel lines on and between which musical notes are written.
She copied the melody onto a blank stave in her notebook.
The composer crowded too many notes onto a single stave.
Similarstaff
Note
Musicians use stave and staff for the same five lines. On them, a note's height shows its pitch. A clef at the start fixes which pitches the lines and spaces stand for, and short ledger lines carry notes beyond them. Because notes sit on or between the lines, you write notes on or onto a stave, not in it.
5
nouncountable
A strong stick or pole, used for walking or as a staff.
The pilgrim walked for miles, his weight resting on a stout stave.
He raised his stave to point at the distant tower.
Similarstaff, stick, pole, cane, rod
6
nouncountable
One of the bars or rounded rungs of a ladder or rack, or one of the cylindrical bars of a lantern wheel.
She gripped each stave as she climbed toward the loft.
A worn stave in the lantern wheel made the gears slip.
Similarrung, bar, step
7
verbtransitive
To push back or keep something away, as with a staff or pole.
The boatman staved the barge away from the pier with a long pole.
She raised the broom to stave the dog from the chicken coop.
Similarfend, push, ward, repel
8
nouncountable
A metrical division of a poem; a stanza.
The poet revised the closing stave to sharpen its rhyme.
They sang only the first stave of the carol.
Similarstanza, verse
Note
A verse word with a singer's edge. Wordsworth, in Rob Roy's Grave (1815), offers to "chaunt a passing stave," and the word still fits carols, ballads and songs comfortably. Staff can mean the same thing, since the two words share an origin (see the barrel-strip meaning). For the divisions of a printed modern poem, stanza is the neutral choice.
9
verbtransitive
To fit or furnish something with staves or rungs.
The cooper staved the cask with seasoned oak.
They stave each frame with iron rounds before assembly.
10
verbtransitive or intransitive
To be lost, or to cause to be lost, through the breaking of the cask, as wine spilled from a smashed barrel.
Much of the ale staved when the rotten barrels gave way in the hold.
A single bad fall could stave the entire shipment of wine.
Similarspill
Note
Here the verb takes the contents, not the container: the wine is staved, lost when its cask is broken. George Sandys wrote in 1615 that all the wine in the city "hath been staved." It is the mirror image of breaking in a cask, where the barrel itself is what gets staved.
11
nouncountable
A sign, symbol, or sigil (often rune-like) used in Icelandic magic.
The manuscript described how to carve a stave for safe travel.
Folk healers inked a stave onto the patient's palm.
Similarsigil, symbol, sign
12
verbtransitive
To make a seam solid or watertight by driving caulking into it with a special iron.
The shipwright staved the planking until no water could seep through.
They stave every seam with oakum and a caulking iron.
Similarcaulk, seal
Note
Plumbers as well as shipwrights could stave. The work is driving material home with a caulking iron, and the object can be lead itself or the joints of pipes into which lead has been run. Unlike the breaking senses, this striking makes a joint tighter, not weaker.

Less common meanings

13
verbarchaicintransitive
To shatter or split apart on striking against something.
The cask staved as it crashed onto the stone quay.
Old barrels stave easily when they strike the ground.
Note
In this rare, archaic use, the vessel does the breaking itself: a boat staves on a rock rather than being staved by it. Robert Forbes's The Lyon in Mourning (1746) uses it of a boat steered toward rocks in a squall. Today the same event is usually told with the transitive "stave in" in the passive: the boat was stove in.
14
verbdatedintransitive
To walk or move along at a rapid pace.
She staved across the moor before the storm broke.
He turned and blundered out of the house, stumbling over a chair and trying a wrong door on the way, and went staving down the street as if afraid to look behind him.
1845, The Century Magazine
Similarstride, hurry, hasten, march, rush
Oppositedawdle, amble, stroll
Note
A dated, dialect verb of headlong motion, usually followed by a direction: someone goes staving down the street or along the lane. The Century Magazine (1845) has a man blunder out of a house and go "staving down the street as if afraid to look behind him." In standard writing, hurry or stride is the safe choice. Keep this one for dialogue or period color.
15
nounrarecountable
The initial consonant, consonant cluster, or vowel of a word that matches the same sound in another word in stave-rhyme.
[The] stave that binds the two halves of the line together the on-verse must be classified as D in spite of the f-stave . . stave-rhyme (OED s.v. Stave sb.)
1974, John Collins Pope, Old English Studies in Honour of John C. Pope
This may seem sparse and incomplete, but is reminiscent of the Old Norse stave rhyme technique in which one avoided two alliterating staves in one dipod – which the poets of that time considered superfluous.
2005, Studia musicologica Norvegica
Note
A metrist's term from the study of alliterative verse. Here the rhyme falls at the front of a word rather than its end. Scholars of Old English and Old Norse meter speak of an f-stave or a two-stave line, and Franz Delitzsch in 1874 traced alliteration staves in Hebrew proverbs. Outside that scholarship the word is rare, and alliteration is the everyday term.

Practice

Can you tell the meanings of stave apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.

Origin

A back-formation from "staves," the plural of "staff."