Word.ws English Dictionary

blive

/blaɪv/

blive is the alternative form of belive.

Meaning of belive

Verb

belive (third-person singular simple present belives, present participle beliving, simple past belove, past participle beliven)

  1. (dialectal, intransitive, otherwise obsolete) To remain, stay.
    • … God helpe me so, the best is thus to done. “Rise, let us speake of lustie life in Troy That we have lad, and forth the time drive, And eke of time coming us rejoy, That bringen shall our blisse now to blive, …"1843 (original date: 1475), Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Tyrwhitt, The Poetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer - Page 321

See all 3 meanings of belive

Adverb

blive (comparative more blive, superlative most blive)

  1. (obsolete) quickly; forthwith
    • “Perdy, ſir knight,” ſaide then th’ enchaunter blive […]1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto III”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 18, page 223

Forms of blive

Verb
third-person singular presentblives
present participlebliving
pastblove
past participlebliven
Adverb
comparativemore blive
superlativemost blive
alternative formbelive

Origin of blive

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

From Middle English blive (“actively, vigorously, eagerly, gladly, quickly, at once”), with unsyncopated alternative form bilive. The adverb is from a contraction of by /bi + live (dative form of lyf, "life"), literally, "by life".

Questions about blive

What does blive mean?
Blive means quickly; forthwith.
What is blive the alternative form of?
Blive is the alternative form of belive.
What part of speech is blive?
Blive is an adverb.
How do you pronounce blive?
Blive is pronounced /blaɪv/.

Words near blive in the dictionary

  1. blitzscale
  2. blitzscaled
  3. blitzscales
  4. blitzscaling
  5. blitzweed
  6. blive
  7. bliven
  8. Blivens
  9. blives
  10. blivet
  11. blivets

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: blive (page history and authors); belive (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-blive.wav.

Cite this entry: “blive.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/blive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.