Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A piece of armor worn below the knee to protect the front of the leg.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun See greeve.
  • noun A ditch or trench.
  • See grave.
  • noun A bush; a tree; a grove.
  • noun A bough; a branch.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun obsolete A grove.
  • noun Armor for the leg below the knee; -- usually in the plural.
  • transitive verb Naut. To clean (a ship's bottom); to grave.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A piece of armour that protects the leg, especially the shin.
  • noun obsolete A ditch or trench.
  • noun obsolete A bush; a tree; a grove.
  • noun obsolete A bough; a branch.
  • verb nautical, transitive To clean (a ship's bottom); to grave.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun armor plate that protects legs below the knee

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Sing. of Middle English greves, from Old French, shins.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English greve, grayve, from Old French greve ("shin"), of unknown origin.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English greve, greyve, from Old English grǣfa, grēfa ("pit, cave, hole, grave, trench"), from Proto-Germanic *grōbō (“pit, ditch”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰrebʰ- (“to dig, scratch, scrape”). Cognate with North Frisian groop ("pit, sewer, gutter"), Dutch groef ("pit, hole, gutter"), German Grube ("pit, hole"), Icelandic gröf ("pit, grave").

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English greve, from Old English grǣfe, grǣfa ("bush, bramble, grove, thicket, copse, brush-wood (for burning), fuel"), from Proto-Germanic *grainiz (“twig”), of unknown origin. Cognate with Old Norse grein ("branch, bough"), Old English grāf, grāfa ("grove"). See grove.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From greaves, animal fat.

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Examples

  • This, paired with a second decoded word TRAIL whose letters derived from The greave is a wittnesd and a floating L, had given him the Cattle Trail, or “Chisholm Trail.”

    Shadow of the Sentinel WARREN GETLER 2003

  • Found in a partly obscured vertical column of text at the top of the page was STINK the T being concealed as part of the fishhook curve of the lowercase g from the misspelled phrase at the top of the map, The greave is a wittnesd.

    Shadow of the Sentinel WARREN GETLER 2003

  • Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Harold Carmichael's helmet will be on display with a gladiator helmet and four original pieces from the gladiator barracks of an amphitheater in Pompeii - a 'greave' (shin guard), two spearheads, and a dagger. "

    Luxist 2010

  • Betting the knight, his money on the armor, the intricate chain mail like wire net or metal scrim, being's effulgent Maginot line, his stake on the weighted mace and plate mittens, on the hinged couters and poleyns, on vambrace and cuisee and greave, banging the breast-plate and all the jewelry of battle for timbre and pitch like a jerk slamming doors and kicking tires in a used car lot.

    Style in Fiction 2009

  • A passage such as this one is much more interested in setting up Elkin's signature lyric rhythms and, in this case, doling out strange and, in context, goofy words -- "vambrace and cuisee and greave" -- than in establishing Elkin's ability to dispense "some lovely little selection of words."

    Style in Fiction 2009

  • Cyril, a particularly adept greave maker, worked there.

    The One Handed Rower of Myonnesus « A Fly in Amber 2009

  • Close proximity of olive branch and greave (peace and war).

    Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008

  • Close proximity of olive branch and greave (peace and war).

    Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008

  • Close proximity of olive branch and greave (peace and war).

    Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro 2008

  • The arm itself,164 it seems to us, will better be protected by a piece like a greave stretched over it than bound up with the corselet.

    On Horsemanship 2007

Comments

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  • This word was used the in the movie "Troy."

    June 12, 2012