wave

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“
The ripple of the wave was already round her lips; robbing her of breath.

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Definitions (114)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (27)

  1. intransitive verb To move freely back and forth or up and down in the air, as branches in the wind.
  2. intransitive verb To make a signal with an up-and-down or back-and-forth movement of the hand or an object held in the hand: waved as she drove by.
  3. intransitive verb To have an undulating or wavy form; curve or curl: Her hair waves naturally.
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Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (69)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (4)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (14)

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Examples (50)

  • And then I would wait for what I call a wave of clarity. —  Jill Bolte Taylor's stroke of insight
  • That is too little to support a sound wave, because a molecule must smack into another to convey the information that the wave is there. —  F ;SF; - vol 100 issue 05 - May 2001
  • The period of the wave is the time it takes a wave to roll from one crest to the next. —  F ;SF - vol 105 issue 04-05 - October-November 2003
  • And remember: whether a wave is a shallow water wave or not depends on how many wavelengths deep the pond is. —  F ;SF - vol 105 issue 04-05 - October-November 2003
  • Israeli media on Wednesday focused on what it called a wave of murders of young children, with three cases revealed in just eight days. —  Turkish Press
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This word has been looked up 198 times.

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Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

tide ·  sound ·  cloud ·  stream ·  storm ·  wind ·  rush ·  movement ·  feel ·  burst ·  mass ·  heat

Used in the same contextWord Family

wave:   waves ·  waved ·  waving
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English waven, from Old English wafian; see webh- in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. from Middle English woven, from Anglo-Saxon wafian, wave, fluctuate (rare), also waver in mind, wonder (cf. Anglo-Saxon wæfre, wavering, restless, wæfer-sy¯n, wavering vision, spectacle); cf. Icelandic *vafa, indicated in the freq. vafra, vafia, waver, in vafi, doubt, vafl, hesitation, also in vāfa, vōfa, modern vofa, swing, vibrate, waver, = Middle High German waben, wave, = Bavarian waiben, waver, totter; cf. Middle High German freq. waberen, wabelen, webelen, fluctuate, waver. The orig. verb is rare in early use, but the freq. forms represented by waver and wabble are common: see waver, wabble. The word has been more or less confused with wave, waive.
  2. from Middle English *wave, wave; from wave, v. The word wave in its most common sense has taken the place, in literary use, of the different noun waw, wawe, a wave. The form wawe could not, however, change into wave: see waw. The noun wave, as well as the verb, has been confused with waive.
 

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/weɪv/
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