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Delved vs Helved - What's the difference?

delved | helved |

As verbs the difference between delved and helved

is that delved is past tense of delve while helved is past tense of helve.

delved

English

Verb

(head)
  • (delve)

    • delve

    English

    Verb

  • To dig the ground, especially with a shovel.
  • * 1381 , John Ball
    • When Adam dalf and Eve span, / Who was then a gentleman?
  • * Dryden
    • Delve of convenient depth your thrashing floor.
  • *
    • I got a spade from the tool-house, and began to delve with all my might - it scraped the coffin; I fell to work with my hands; the wood commenced cracking about the screws; I was on the point of attaining my object, when it seemed that I heard a sigh from some one above, close at the edge of the grave, and bending down.
  • (ambitransitive) To search thoroughly and carefully for information, research, dig into, penetrate, fathom, trace out
  • * 1609-11 , Shakespeare, Cymbeline, King of Britain
    • I cannot delve him to the root.
  • * 1943 , Emile C. Tepperman, Calling Justice, Inc.!
    • She was intensely eager to delve into the mystery of Mr. Joplin and his brief case.
  • (ambitransitive) To dig, to excavate.
  • * ca. 1260 , Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend
    • And then they made an oratory behind the altar, and would have dolven for to have laid the body in that oratory ...
  • * 1891 , , The White Company , chapter IV
    • Let him take off his plates and delve' himself, if ' delving must be done.

    Synonyms

    * (to dig the ground) dig * (to search thoroughly) investigate, research

    Derived terms

    * delver * indelve

    Related terms

    * dolven

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A pit or den.
  • * 1590 , Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , III.iii:
    • the wise Merlin whylome wont (they say) / To make his wonne, low vnderneath the ground, / In a deepe delue , farre from the vew of day [...].

    Anagrams

    * ----

    helved

    English

    Verb

    (head)
  • (helve)

    • helve

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • The handle or haft of a tool or weapon.
  • * 1917 , (Robert Frost), The Ax-helve :
    • It was the bad ax-helve someone had sold me— / “Made on machine,” he said, plowing the grain [...].
  • * 1974 , Guy Davenport, Tatlin! :
    • The eyelet in the rose pilleum of his glans welled a clear bead that silled under the corona, wound the veinclomb helve , and ran a snailtrack down the thrum and ridge of the underduct.
  • * 1982 , (Lawrence Durrell), Constance'', Faber & Faber 2004 (''Avignon Quintet ), p. 847:
    • Happily they were only sketchily armed, the group-leaders carried pistols and pick-helves .
  • A forge hammer lifted by a cam acting on the helve between the fulcrum and the head.

    • Verb

  • To furnish (an axe, etc.) with a helve.
    • ----