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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

cleaver.

A squarish, heavy knife used by butchers for hacking through bones, etc.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈklivɚ/General-American
  1. A squarish, heavy knife used by butchers for hacking through bones, etc.

  2. A Paleolithic biface.

  3. A type of clave, or rhythm stick, a concussive musical instrument used in traditional Bahamian music.

    Bahamas
  4. The act of eliminating someone or something, especially when done by someone with a history of other eliminations; a dismissal, rejection, or removal.

    figuratively
  5. A type of oar blade with an asymmetric, mostly rectangular shape that resembles a cleaving knife.

  6. A line segment that bisects the perimeter of a triangle and has one endpoint at the midpoint of one of the triangle's three sides.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English clevere, equivalent to cleave + -er.

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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.