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Reave vs Rive - What's the difference?

reave | rive |

As verbs the difference between reave and rive

is that reave is (archaic) to plunder, pillage, rob, pirate, or remove or reave can be (archaic) to split, tear, break apart while rive is .

reave

English

Etymology 1

(etyl) reven, from (etyl) 'to roughen', Sanskrit (term) 'to make suffer'). See (m) and (m).

Alternative forms

* reive

Verb

  • (archaic) To plunder, pillage, rob, pirate, or remove.
  • *
  • * 1997 , Lawrence R. Schehr, Rendering French Realism (ISBN 0804780161), 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.
    Derived terms
    * border reivers

    Etymology 2

    Alteration of rive by confusion with the above.

    Verb

  • (archaic) To split, tear, break apart.
  • rive

    English

    Verb

  • To tear apart by force; to split; to cleave.
  • * (William Shakespeare) (c.1564–1616)
  • I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds / Have rived the knotty oaks
  • To pierce or cleave with a weapon.
  • * :
  • And therwith she toke the swerd from her loue that lay ded and fylle to the ground in a swowne / And whan she aroos she made grete dole out of mesure / the whiche sorowe greued Balyn passyngly sore / and he wente vnto her for to haue taken the swerd oute of her h?d butsodenly she sette the pomell to the ground / and rofe her self thorow the body
  • (label) To break apart; to split.
  • * 1590 , (Edmund Spenser), (The Faerie Queen) , II.vi:
  • The varlet at his plaint was grieu'd so sore, / That his deepe wounded hart in two did riue .
  • * (1665-1728)
  • Freestone rives , splits, and breaks in any direction.
  • In woodworking, to use a technique of splitting or sawing wood radially from a log (e.g. clapboards).
  • Synonyms

    * (to rend asunder) cleave, rend, split

    See also

    * rip * rib

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A place torn; a rent; a rift.
  • Synonyms

    * (a place torn) rent, rift ----