dove

Meanings

Noun

• A pigeon, especially one smaller in size; a bird (often arbitrarily called either a pigeon or a dove or both) of more than 300 species of the family Columbidae.
• A person favouring conciliation and negotiation rather than conflict.
• A greyish, bluish, pinkish colour like that of the bird.

Verb

• Strong Past of dive

Related

Similar words

• columbid, columbiform, culver, pigeon

Origin

• From Middle English dove, douve, duve, from Old English *dūfe ("dove, pigeon"), from Proto-Germanic *dūbǭ ("dove, pigeon"), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰewbʰ- ("to whisk, smoke, be obscure"). Cognate with Scots doo, dow, Saterland Frisian Duuwe, West Frisian do, Dutch duif, Afrikaans duif, Sranan Tongo doifi, German Taube, German Low German Duuv, Dutch Low Saxon duve, doeve, Danish due, Faroese dúgva, Icelandic dúfa, Norwegian Bokmål due, Norwegian Nynorsk due, Swedish duva, Yiddish טויב, Gothic *𐌳𐌿𐌱𐍉.
• A modern dialectal formation of the strong conjugation, by analogy with drive → drove and weave → wove.