waive
Often confused with wave
Pluralwaives
- 1To give up a legal right or claim voluntarily, choosing not to enforce or insist on it.
The defendant agreed to waive his right to a jury trial.
By signing the form, you waive any claim to future compensation.
Similarrelinquish, forgo, renounce, surrender, abandon
Oppositeexercise, assert, claim, enforce
Note
The legal core of the word: you waive what you are entitled to insist on. The object need not be a personal right. A government can waive a normal 30-day waiting period, and a mayor can waive a city's zoning standards. The word came through Anglo-Norman weyver, 'to abandon, allow to become a waif', so giving up a right began as leaving something ownerless.
- 2To give up the right to collect a payment or fee that would otherwise be owed.
The landlord chose to waive last month's rent during the repairs.
Many lenders will waive early repayment penalties if you ask.
Similarcancel, forgo, remit, drop, scrap
Oppositecharge, impose, collect, levy
Note
Here the thing given up is money: a fee, a charge or a penalty that someone would otherwise have to pay. The party who waives is always the one owed, such as a lender, a landlord or an office. The one who benefits is the payer. It is a narrowing of the general legal sense, with the right in question being the right to be paid.
- 3To set aside or steer clear of something.
The captain chose to waive the open route and keep to the coast.
She sought to waive any quarrel with her neighbors.
Note
An older, gentler use in which waiving means setting something aside rather than surrendering it. Isaac Barrow, writing before 1683, pairs it with renounce: we 'renounce or waive our own opinions', yielding to the direction of others. Modern ears hear the legal meaning in that line, but the sense is closer to putting aside. Outside deliberate period writing, set aside or avoid is the safer choice.
- 4To abandon or give up a person or thing entirely.
but she might be waived, and held as abandoned.
1851, Alexander Mansfield Burrill, Law Dictionary and GlossaryNote
Abandonment in its broadest form, applied to people as well as things. In Alexander Mansfield Burrill's Law Dictionary and Glossary (1851), 'she might be waived, and held as abandoned', with the second phrase explaining the first. This meaning stays closest to the Anglo-Norman source, and the modern legal sense narrows it to giving up a right.
- 5To place someone outside the protection of the law; to declare an outlaw.
Note
Outlawing understood as abandonment: the Anglo-Norman source meant 'to allow to become a waif', leaving someone without the law's keeping. The verb now belongs only to historical writing, and outlaw is the modern word. A reader who meets waived in an old record should not mistake it for the modern sense of giving up a right. Its noun partner is the word for an outlawed woman.
- 6An abandoned or homeless person; a castaway.
A lonely waive wandered the docks, begging coins from sailors.
But vvhat a vvretched, and diſconſolate Hermitage is that Houſe, vvhich is not viſited by thee [God], and vvhat a VVayue, and Stray is that Man, that hath not thy Markes vpon him?
1624, John Donne, “13. Prayer”Note
The same 'abandoned one', widened from law to anyone cast adrift. John Donne's Deuotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624) pairs it with stray: the man without God's marks upon him is 'a Wayue, and Stray'. Its living relative is waif, the Old French word that also stands behind the legal verb.
- 7A woman placed outside the protection of the law; an outlawed woman.
Branded a waive, she lost every legal right she had once held.
The rolls recorded two waives among those condemned that year.
Note
A noun made from the verb: Anglo-Norman waive, probably the past participle of weyver, so a waive was literally 'one abandoned'. It names the female counterpart of an outlaw and pairs with the verb 'to outlaw'. Like that verb, it survives only in writing about old law, where it marks a status rather than an insult.
- 8To sway or swing to and fro, as branches or masts do in the wind.
Branches waive overhead as the storm rises.
The ship's masts seemed to waive against the gray sky.
Note
A different word that happens to share the spelling. It comes from Old Norse veifa, 'to wave, swing', through Middle English weyven, 'to wave, waver', and has nothing to do with surrendering rights. Modern English spells this motion wave, so writing branches waiving in the wind now reads as a slip rather than an archaism.
- 9To stray or wander, moving without a settled course.
Cattle waive freely over the unfenced moor.
Pilgrims would waive for days before finding the shrine.
Note
Swinging back and forth became drifting off course. This use belongs to the Norse 'sway' verb, not to the legal one. Unlike every legal use of the spelling, it takes no object. The Middle English source meant both 'to wave' and 'to waver', and straying is wavering carried into motion.
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Origins
From Middle English weyven ("to avoid, renounce"), via Anglo-Norman weyver ("to abandon, allow to become a waif") and Old French waif and gaiver ("to abandon"), ultimately of Scandinavian/North Germanic origin.
From Middle English weyven ("to wave, waver"), from Old Norse veifa ("to wave, swing"), from Proto-Germanic *waibijaną.
From Anglo-Norman waive, probably as the past participle of weyver (see Etymology 1).