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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

tave.

To sprawl with the arms and legs; kick or fidget with the feet.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb
  1. To sprawl with the arms and legs; kick or fidget with the feet.

    intransitive
  2. To toss or tumble oneself about; act violently, rage, throw a fit.

    intransitive
  3. To struggle, toil, strive, labour.

    intransitive
  4. To trudge, walk heavily.

    intransitive
  5. To wrestle.

    ambitransitive
  6. To hurry along; gad about.

    dialectal · intransitive
  7. To distress, overtire.

    dialectal · transitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English taven, from Old Norse *tafa, from Proto-Germanic *tabōną (“to grope, feel”). Cognate with Faroese tava (“to endeavour, exert oneself”), Norwegian Nynorsk tava (“to toil in vain”), German zabeln (“to move convulsively, sprawl, flounder”).

noun
  1. A difficulty, struggle.

    dialectal
  2. A hurry, stir, commotion.

    dialectal
Where this word comes from

From Middle English taven, from Old Norse *tafa, from Proto-Germanic *tabōną (“to grope, feel”). Cognate with Faroese tava (“to endeavour, exert oneself”), Norwegian Nynorsk tava (“to toil in vain”), German zabeln (“to move convulsively, sprawl, flounder”).

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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.