Skip to content
Allin

clive

verbnounverbcommon in dialogue

To climb; ascend.

verb

  1. 1

    To climb; ascend.

Etymology

From Middle English cliven, from Old English clīfan (“to cleave, adhere, stick”), from Proto-West Germanic *klīban, from Proto-Germanic *klībaną (“to glue, stick”), from Proto-Indo-European *gleybʰ- (“to lubricate, stick”). Cognate with Dutch kleven (“to adhere, stick”), German kleben (“to adhere, stick”), Swedish kliva (“to climb, stalk”), Icelandic klífa (“to climb, ascend”).

noun

  1. 1

    Burdock or agrimony.

Etymology

From Middle English *clive (in compound: Middle English garclive), from Old English clīfe (“clifers (cleavers), burdock”), from Proto-West Germanic *klībā. Cognate with Middle Dutch kleve, klijve (“burdock”), Middle Low German klive (“burdock”).

verb

  1. 1

    To split; separate; cleave; chop.

    After 'frosting' the stone may be 'clived' or split along the bedding planes. Once clived, the thin slabs are dressed for use and sold as Collyweston Slates, for use as tilestones.

    IL-1β presents the peculiarity of being produced in the form of a biologically inactive precursor, known as proIL-1β, that needs to be clived at an aspartate residue by a specific enzyme, named interleukin-1β converting enzyme (ICE) or [...]

Etymology

From Middle English cliven, from Old Norse klyfja, klufða (“to split, chop, cleave”), from Proto-Germanic *kleubaną (“to split, pick”), from Proto-Indo-European *glewbʰ- (“to cut, carve, peel”). Cognate with Old English clēofan (“to cleave, split, separate”). Doublet of cleave.

Forms

plural
clives
past tense
clived, clove
past participle
clived, clove, cliven
present participle
cliving
third person singular
clives
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).