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cleve

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cleve¹

Where it comes from

From Middle English cleve, from Old English cleofa (“that which is cloven, a cleft, chasm, cave, den, lair, cell, chamber, cellar, apartment”), from Proto-Germanic *klebô (“chamber, cell”), from Proto-Indo-European *glewbʰ- (“to cut, cleave, split, divide”). Cognate with Old Norse klefi (“a closet, sleeping closet, bedroom”) (whence Icelandic klefi (“cell, compartment”)). Related to cleave.

noun cleves

  1. dialectal A room; chamber.
  2. dialectal A cottage.
  3. obsolete A cliff or hillside.

Cleve²

proper noun

  1. A small town on the Eyre Peninsula, South Australia, named after Cleve House in Devon, England.
  2. A local government area is this area of South Australia; in full, the District Council of Cleve.
  3. A surname.
  4. A male given name, found predominantly in the United States.

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MLA

"cleve." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/cleve. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

cleve. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/cleve

Chicago

"cleve." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/cleve.

BibTeX
@misc{cleve_2026,
  title = {cleve},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/cleve},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}