Word.ws English Dictionary

calver

/ˈkɑːvə/US/ˈkævɚ/

calver noun: a cow that produces young.

Noun (1)

calver (plural calvers)

  1. A cow that produces young.

Adjective

calver

  1. Of salmon: freshly caught.
    • calver salmon

Verb

calver (third-person singular simple present calvers, present participle calvering, simple past and past participle calvered)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To cut into slices and pickle.
    • My foot-boy shall eat pheasants, calvered salmons, / Knots, godwits, lampreys: I myself will have / The beards of barbels, served instead of salads […]1610 (first performance), Ben[jamin] Jonson, The Alchemist, London: […] Thomas Snodham, for Walter Burre, and are to be sold by Iohn Stepneth, […], published 1612, →OCLC, (please specify the Internet...
    • Great lords sometimes / For change leave calver'd salmon and eat sprats.1633, Philip Massinger, “The Guardian”, in William Gifford, editor, The Plays of Philip Massinger, published 1845, act 4, scene 2, page 429
  2. (intransitive, obsolete) To bear, or be susceptible of, being calvered.
    • [A Grayling's] flesh will so easily calver that […][it] is very good meat at all times.1676, Izaak Walton, Charles Cotton, The Compleat Angler

Proper noun capitalized: Calver

Calver (countable and uncountable, plural Calvers)

  1. A village and civil parish of Derbyshire Dales district, Derbyshire, England (OS grid ref SK240745).
  2. A habitational surname from Old English.

Noun (2) capitalized: CalVer

CalVer (uncountable)

  1. (abbreviation) Abbreviation of calendar versioning.

Forms of calver

Noun
pluralcalvers
Verb
third-person singular presentcalvers
present participlecalvering
past participlecalvered
pastcalvered
Proper noun
pluralCalvers

Origin of calver

From calve + -er.

As the adjective predates the verb, possibly from Middle English calver (“interspersed with flakes”), from Old English calwer. Cognate with Scots caller.

From Old English calf (“calf”) + ōfer (“slope, ridge”).

Words that rhyme with calver

Questions about calver

What does calver mean?
Calver means a cow that produces young.
What part of speech is calver?
Calver can be a noun, an adjective, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce calver?
Calver is pronounced /ˈkɑːvə/ (UK).
What is the plural of calver?
The plural of calver is calvers.

Words near calver in the dictionary

  1. calvasone
  2. calve
  3. calved
  4. Calveley
  5. calveolin
  6. calver
  7. calvered
  8. calveren
  9. calverial
  10. calvering
  11. Calverley

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: calver (page history and authors); Calver (page history and authors); CalVer (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.

Last updated:

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

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