waive
English
Alternative forms
- wave (obsolete)
Pronunciation
- enPR: wāv, IPA(key): /weɪv/
Audio (UK) (file)
- Rhymes: -eɪv
- Homophone: wave
Etymology 1
From Middle English weyven (“to avoid, renounce”), from Anglo-Norman weyver (“to abandon, allow to become a waif”), from Old French waif (“waif”), from gaiver (“to abandon”), ultimately of Scandinavian/North Germanic origin; see weyver.
Verb
waive (third-person singular simple present waives, present participle waiving, simple past and past participle waived)
- (transitive, law) To relinquish (a right etc.); to give up claim to; to forgo.
- If you waive the right to be silent, anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.
- c. 1390, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, The Manciple’s Tale:
- Lat take a cat, and fostre hym wel with milk, / And tendre flessh, and make his couche of silk, / And lat hym seen a mous go by the wal, / Anon he weyveth milk and flessh and al […].
- (particularly) To relinquish claim on a payment or fee which would otherwise be due.
- (now rare) To put aside, avoid.
- a. 1683, Isaac Barrow, Sermon LIX, “Of obedience to our spiritual guides and governors”:
- […] seeing in many such occasions of common life we advisedly do renounce or waive our own opinions, absolutely yielding to the direction of others
- a. 1683, Isaac Barrow, Sermon LIX, “Of obedience to our spiritual guides and governors”:
- (obsolete) To outlaw (someone).
- (obsolete) To abandon, give up (someone or something).
- 1851, Alexander Mansfield Burrill, Law Dictionary and Glossary:
- but she might be waived, and held as abandoned.
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Derived terms
- waivable
- waiver
Related terms
- waiver
- waif
Translations
to relinquish; to give up claim to
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to put aside, avoid
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to outlaw
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to abandon, give up
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Etymology 2
From Middle English weyven (“to wave, waver”), from Old Norse veifa (“to wave, swing”) (Norwegian veiva), from Proto-Germanic *waibijaną.
Verb
waive (third-person singular simple present waives, present participle waiving, simple past and past participle waived)
- (obsolete) To move from side to side; to sway.
- (intransitive, obsolete) To stray, wander.
- c. 1390, Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Merchant’s Tale”, Canterbury Tales:
- ye been so ful of sapience / That yow ne liketh, for youre heighe prudence, / To weyven fro the word of Salomon.
- c. 1390, Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Merchant’s Tale”, Canterbury Tales:
Translations
to sway
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Etymology 3
From Anglo-Norman waive, probably as the past participle of weyver, as Etymology 1, above.
Noun
waive (plural waives)
- (obsolete, law) A woman put out of the protection of the law; an outlawed woman.
- (obsolete) A waif; a castaway.
- 1624, John Donne, Deuotions upon Emergent Occasions, and Seuerall Steps in My Sicknes: […], London: Printed by A[ugustine] M[atthews] for Thomas Iones, OCLC 55189476; republished as Geoffrey Keynes, John Sparrow, editor, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions: […], Cambridge: At the University Press, 1923, OCLC 459265555:
- […] what a wretched, and disconsolate hermitage is that house, which is not visited by thee, and what a waive and stray is that man, that hath not thy marks upon him?
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Translations
outlawed woman
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Anagrams
- aview