Colve

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. An archaic verb meaning to cut, hew, or carve a piece of wood, stone, or other material into shape
2. Obsolete term for shaping or cutting a material by slicing into it with a blade or tool
3. Old word for carving or hewing something out of a solid material such as timber or stone

Etymology: "Colve" is an Old English verb, "ceolfan" (also written "cēlfan"), meaning to carve, cut or hew, most often applied to wood or stone. Its ancestry goes back to a Germanic root shared with words for cutting and chiselling, and the Old English form survived in the language for centuries before it faded from everyday use. Its use is now almost entirely confined to dictionaries and to dialect and literary revival. The word's most striking feature is how completely it was overtaken by later vocabulary. English gained many verbs for cutting from Old Norse and French, and "colve" gradually lost ground to them, so that by the early modern period it was rarely written except in glossaries and antiquarian lists. Its survival today owes much to lexicographers and writers who collected old English words, which is why it still appears in reference works.