Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Preterit and past participle of heave.
  • To wait; linger; loiter; hover about.
  • To hover in the air.
  • To float.
  • To move; stand aside.
  • An obsolete aphetic form of behove, behoove.
  • noun The ground-ivy, Nepeta Glechoma.
  • noun Same as hoove.
  • To lift; heave.
  • To swell; inflate.
  • To rise; ascend.
  • To swell.

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

  • imp. & p. p. of heave.
  • See To heave a cable short, To heave a ship to, etc., under Heave.
  • verb Obs. or Scot. To rise; to swell; to heave; to cause to swell.
  • intransitive verb obsolete To hover around; to loiter; to lurk.

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

  • verb transitive To raise; lift; hold up.
  • verb intransitive To rise.
  • verb nautical Simple past tense and past participle of heave.
  • verb Simple past tense and past participle of heave.
  • verb obsolete, intransitive To remain suspended in air, water etc.; to float, to hover.
  • verb obsolete, intransitive To wait, linger.
  • verb obsolete, intransitive To move on or by.
  • verb intransitive To remain; delay.
  • verb intransitive To remain stationary (usually on horseback).

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English hoven, alteration (due to hove, hoven, past tense and past participle of heven ("to heave")). More at heave.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Inflected forms.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English hoven ("to linger, wait, hover, move aside, entertain, cherish, foster"), from Old English *hofian (“to receive into one's house”), from Proto-Germanic *hufōnan (“to house, lodge”), from Proto-Germanic *hufan (“hill, height, farm, dwelling”), from Proto-Indo-European *keup- (“to arch, bend, buckle”). Cognate with Old Frisian hovia ("to receive into one's home, entertain"), Old Dutch hoven ("to receive into one's home, entertain"). Related to Old English hof ("court, house, dwelling"). More at hovel.

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Examples

  • Off the north shore of Prince Edward Island, then a wild, wooded land, with settlements few and far between, the Captain hove-to in order to replenish his supply of water.

    The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career Lucy Maud 1917

  • 'At one place, some suburban villa, he could get no answer to his ring, and he "hove" his cards over the gate just as it opened, and he had the shame of explaining in his unexplanatory French to the man picking them up.

    My Mark Twain (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance) William Dean Howells 1878

  • 'At one place, some suburban villa, he could get no answer to his ring, and he "hove" his cards over the gate just as it opened, and he had the shame of explaining in his unexplanatory French to the man picking them up.

    Literary Friends and Acquaintance; a Personal Retrospect of American Authorship William Dean Howells 1878

  • We "hove" our deep-sea-line by night, and the operation was very interesting, at least to me.

    Redburn. His First Voyage Herman Melville 1855

  • Together we hove up the rope till the anchor I came in sight with the sturgeon line caught across one of the flukes.

    The King of the Greeks 2010

  • Of course, if anybody hove in sight, the position was instantly reversed.

    THE PRIESTLY PREROGATIVE 2010

  • He began his second round with two early bogeys but as the back nine hove into view so did his famous spirit as four birdies turned a ho-hum day into the exactly the kind of day he needed.

    Masters 2011: Rory McIlroy shines but Tiger Woods prowls 2011

  • Never a day does the gray thin, or the snow-squalls cease that we do not sight ships, west-bound like ourselves, hove-to and trying to hold on to the meagre westing they possess.

    CHAPTER XXXIX 2010

  • Being Umm Hassane, she hove off to her neighborhood Amal office, with a “connected” relative she had browbeaten into coming with her, to complain.

    Day of Honey Annia Ciezadlo 2011

  • Mostly my husband has worked in male-dominated environments so he can get a bit excited when real live women hove into view.

    The Office Party « Tales from the Reading Room 2009

Comments

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  • hove in the expression "hove around the bend" is equivalent to came.

    July 17, 2014