waive

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: wāv, IPA: /weɪv/, SAMPA: /weIv/
• Rhymes: -eɪv
• Homophone: wave

Etymology 1

Middle English weyven, from Anglo-Norman weyver (“to abandon, allow to become a waif”), from weyf (“waif”).

Verb

waive (third-person singular simple present waives, present participle waiving, simple past and past participle waived)

1. (obsolete) To outlaw (someone).
2. (obsolete) To abandon, give up (someone or something).
   • 1851, Alexander Mansfield Burrill, Law Dictionary and Glossary:

     but she might be waived, and held as abandoned.

3. (transitive, law) To relinquish (a right etc.); to give up claim to; to forego.

   If you waive the right to be silent, anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.

   • c. 1390, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, The Manciple's Tale:

     Lat take a cat, and fostre hym wel with milk, / And tendre flessh, and make his couche of silk, / And lat hym seen a mous go by the wal, / Anon he weyveth milk and flessh and al [...].

4. (now rare) To put aside, avoid.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Barrow, Of obedience to our spiritual guides and governors, Sermon LIX:

     We absolutely do renounce or waive our own opinions, absolutely yielding to the direction of others.

Translations

To relinquish; to give up claim to

German: verzichten (de), aufgeben (de)

Russian: отказываться (ru)

To throw away; abandon

German: verlassen (de), aufgeben (de)

Russian: отбрасывать (ru), отвергать (ru)

Derived terms

• waivable

Related terms

• waiver

Etymology 2

Middle English weyven, from Old Norse veifa (“to wave, swing”) (Norwegian veiva), from Proto-Germanic *waibijanan.

Verb

waive (third-person singular simple present waives, present participle waiving, simple past and past participle waived)

1. (obsolete) To move from side to side; to sway.
2. (intransitive, obsolete) To stray, wander.
   • c. 1390, Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Merchant's Tale", Canterbury Tales:

     ye been so ful of sapience / That yow ne liketh, for youre heighe prudence, / To weyven fro the word of Salomon.

Etymology 3

From Anglo-Norman waive, probably as the past participle of weyver, as Etymology 1, above.

Noun

waive (plural waives)

1. (obsolete, law) A woman put out of the protection of the law; an outlawed woman.

Etymology 4

Variant forms.

Noun

waive (plural waives)

1. Obsolete form of waif.
   • 1624, John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions:

     I know, O Lord, the ordinary discomfort that accompanies that phrase, that the house is visited, and that thy works, and thy tokens are upon the patient; but what a wretched, and disconsolate hermitage is that house, which is not visited by thee, and what a waive and stray is that man, that hath not thy marks upon him?