Verb

(en verb)

(now rare) To turn back, or turn to the contrary; to reverse.

* Prior

Till happy Chance reverts the cruel scene.

* Thomson

The tumbling stream / Reverted , plays in undulating flow.

To throw back; to reflect; to reverberate.

To cause to return to a former condition.

(now rare) To return; to come back.

* Shakespeare

So that my arrows / Would have reverted to my bow again.

To return to the possession of.

# (legal) Of an estate: To return to its former owner, or to his or her heirs, when a grant comes to an end.

To cause (a property or rights) to return to the previous owner.

To return to a former practice, condition, belief, etc.

* {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham)

, title=(The China Governess) , chapter=2 citation , passage=Now that she had rested and had fed from the luncheon tray Mrs. Broome had just removed, she had reverted to her normal gaiety.  She looked cool in a grey tailored cotton dress with a terracotta scarf and shoes and her hair a black silk helmet.}}

(biology) To return to an earlier or primitive type or state; to take on the traits or characters of an ancestral type.

To change back, as from a soluble to an insoluble state or the reverse.

To return to a previous subject of discourse or thought.

(intransitive, in Muslim usage, due to the belief that all people are born Muslim) To convert to Islam.

* 1995 , Wiz?rat al-I?l?m wa-al-Thaq?fah, Sudanow: Volume 20

He added that Islam is the religion of justice which rejects injustice, referring to the case of Mike Tyson and how he has become a real problem to the West since he reverted to Islam.

* 1997 , Islamic Society of North America, Islamic horizons

The mission of 'translating' the Qur'an had preoccupied Pickthall's mind since he reverted to Islam.

* 2003 , Islamic Revival Association, Al Jumu?ah: Volume 15, Issues 7-12

But once he reverted to Islam, he attended as many lectures as he could, listened to Islamic tapes and the recitations of Qur'an. Subtly and gradually his moods were stabilized, and he started to have positive outlook on life.

(intransitive, nonstandard, proscribed) To reply; to come back.

(math) To treat (a series, such as y = a + bx + cx² + ...'', where one variable ''y'' is expressed in powers of a second variable ''x''), so as to find the second variable ''x'' expressed in a series arranged in powers of ''y .

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.