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dive

verbnounnounnouncommon in dialogue

  • //daɪv//
  • //ˈdiːveɪ//

To swim under water.

verb

  1. 1

    To swim under water.

    He dove in the water to save her.

  2. 2

    To jump into water head-first.

    It is not that pearls fetch a high price because men have dived for them.

  3. 3

    To jump headfirst toward the ground or into another substance.

    to dive into home plate

  4. 4

    To descend sharply or steeply.

    [the Hammersmith & City at Paddington]: There it dived underground, eventually enabling its train services to run over, and be entangled with, the easterly extensions of the Metropolitan and the District.

  5. 5

    To lose altitude quickly by pointing downwards, as with a bird or aircraft.

  6. 6

    To undertake with enthusiasm.

    She dove right in and started making improvements.

  7. 7

    To deliberately fall down after a challenge, imitating being fouled, in the hope of getting one's opponent penalised.

  8. 8

    To leap while fielding to take a brilliant catch which usually results in a wicket and appreciation.

  9. 9

    To cause to descend, dunk; to plunge something into water.

    To dive an infant either thrice or but once in Baptism

  10. 10

    To explore by diving; to plunge into.

    The Curtii bravely dived the gulf of flame.

    The green lane is the school-boy's friend, / Low leaves his quarrel apprehend, / […] / The brimming brook invites a leap, / He dives the hollow, climbs the steep.

  11. 11

    figurativeTo plunge or to go deeply into any subject, question, business, etc.; to penetrate; to explore.

    dive into the Concerns of all about them

    Google says this lets AI Mode recommend more diverse sources, produce deeper answers to more complex queries, dives deeper – and you have the ability to ask follow-up questions.

Etymology

From Middle English diven, duven, from the merger of Old English dȳfan (“to dip, immerse”, transitive weak verb) (from Proto-Germanic *dūbijaną) and dūfan (“to duck, dive, sink, penetrate”, intransitive strong verb) (past participle ġedofen). Cognate with Icelandic dýfa (“to dip, dive”), Low German bedaven (“covered, covered with water”). See also deep, dip.

noun

  1. 1

    A jump or plunge into water.

    the dive of a hawk after prey

  2. 2

    A headfirst jump toward the ground or into another substance.

    The 24-year-old Brazilian hurdler Joao Vitor de Oliveira progressed to the Rio competition’s semi-finals by executing a Superman-style dive headfirst over the finishing line – beating South Africa’s Antonio Alkana by one hundredth of a second.

  3. 3

    A downward swooping motion.

  4. 4

    A swim under water.

  5. 5

    A decline.

  6. 6

    slangA seedy bar, nightclub, etc.

  7. 7

    Aerial descent with the nose pointed down.

  8. 8

    A deliberate fall after a challenge.

noun

  1. 1

    Also a form of divaplural of diva

Etymology

From Italian dive; see diva.

noun

  1. 1

    Variant of daevaobsoleteObsolete form of daeva.

Forms

plural
dives
past tense
dived, dove
past participle
dived, dove, doven, diven
present participle
diving
third person singular
dives
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).