reave

English

Alternative forms

• reive, rieve (archaic)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɹiːv/

• Audio (UK)

  (file)

  Rhymes: -iːv

• Homophone: reeve

Etymology 1

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 rumpere (“to break”), Lithuanian rùpti (“to roughen”), Sanskrit रोपयति (ropayati, “to make suffer”)). See rob and reif.

Verb

reave (third-person singular simple present reaves, present participle reaving, simple past and past participle reaved or reft)

1. (archaic) To plunder, pillage, rob, pirate, or remove.
   • 1997, Lawrence R. Schehr, Rendering French Realism, →ISBN, page 18:

     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.

2. (archaic) To deprive (a person) of something through theft or violence.
   • 1985, Anthony Burgess, Kingdom of the Wicked:

     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.

Derived terms

• border reiver

Related terms

• bereave
• reaver
• rip
• rob

Translations

to plunder, pillage, rob, pirate, or remove

• Arabic: نهب بالإعتداء‎ (nahb bilʼiʻtidāʼ)
• Bulgarian: ограбвам (bg) (ograbvam), похищавам (bg) (pohištavam)
• Dutch: roven (nl)
• German: rauben (de)
• Polish: grabić (pl) impf, ograbić pf, plądrować (pl) impf, splądrować pf

• Russian: гра́бить (ru) impf (grábitʹ), опустоша́ть (ru) impf (opustošátʹ), разоря́ть (ru) impf (razorjátʹ), расхища́ть (ru) impf (rasxiščátʹ)
• Spanish: robar (es)
• Swedish: röva (sv)

Etymology 2

Alteration of rive by confusion with the above.

Verb

reave (third-person singular simple present reaves, present participle reaving, simple past and past participle reft)

1. (archaic) To split, tear, break apart.
   • 1848, Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son

     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, […]

Related terms

• rive
• unreaved

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Middle English

Verb

reave

1. (Early Middle English) Alternative form of reven