reave
English
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reave¹
- /ɹiːv/
Sounds like reeve, (th-fronting) rethe, wreathe · Rhymes with -iːv
Where it comes from
From Middle English reven, from Old English rēafian, from Proto-West Germanic *raubōn.
Germanic cognates include West Frisian rave, Old English rēaf (“spoils, booty”)), and Old English past participle rofen (“torn, broken”), Norwegian rjuva, German rauben, Danish røve, and Swedish röva. Outside of Germanic, related to Latin rumpō (“to break”), Lithuanian rùpti (“to roughen”), Sanskrit रोपयति (ropayati, “to make suffer”)). See rob and reif.
verb reaves · reaving · reaved · reft
- To plunder, pillage, rob, pirate, or remove. And I for one am not convinced of the innocence of the model: it is as if we let a criminal make up the law as he or she ambles along, reaving right and left.
- To deprive (a person) of something through theft or violence. Few of the chroniclers of Nero’s reign have been accurate when relating the situation that obtained between the Emperor and his mother from the time when, reft of her German and Pannonian guards, she lived in a more or less solitary rage on one estate or another.
reave²
- /ɹiːv/
Sounds like reeve, (th-fronting) rethe, wreathe · Rhymes with -iːv
Where it comes from
Alteration of rive by confusion with the above.
verb reaves · reaving · reft · reive · rieve
- To split, tear, break apart. There was the same enforced composure on her face, that there had been when she was dressing; and the wreath upon her head encircled the same cold and steady brow. But it would have been better to have seen its leaves and flowers reft into fragments by her passionate hand, […]
Translations
Every language
verb to plunder, pillage, rob, pirate, or remove
| Español | robar |
|---|---|
| 中文 | 掠夺 luèduó, 抢夺 qiǎngduó |
| Deutsch | rauben |
| Русский | гра́бить grábitʹ, опустоша́ть opustošátʹ, разоря́ть razorjátʹ, расхища́ть rasxiščátʹ |
| العربية | نَهْب بِالْإِعْتِدَاء nahb bi-l-ʔiʕtidāʔ |
Talk about this word "reave." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/reave. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026. reave. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/reave "reave." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/reave.Cite this
@misc{reave_2026,
title = {reave},
howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
year = {2026},
url = {https://micwyn.com/word/reave},
urldate = {2026-11-06}
}
