calve.
To give birth to a calf.
Meaning & usage
To give birth to a calf.
The farmer could tell Bessie was about to calve.
To assist in a cow’s giving birth to a calf.
The farmer calved Bessie for almost two hours.
To give birth to (a calf).
To shed a large piece.
The glacier was starting to calve even as we watched.
To break off.
The sea was dangerous because of icebergs calving off the nearby glacier.
To shed (a large piece); to set loose (a mass of ice).
The glacier was starting to calve an iceberg even as we watched.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English calven, from Old English *calfian, cealfian, from Proto-West Germanic *kalbōn, from Proto-Germanic *kalbōną (“to calve”), from *kalbaz (“calf”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian koolvje, Dutch kalven, German Low German kalven, German kalben, Swedish kalva, Icelandic kálfa.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.