Word.ws English Dictionary

cleves

cleves is the plural of cleve.

Meaning of cleve

Noun

cleve (plural cleves)

  1. (dialectal) A room; chamber.
  2. (dialectal) A cottage.
  3. (obsolete) A cliff or hillside.

See all 7 meanings of cleve

Proper noun capitalized: Cleves

Cleves

  1. (historical) Kleve (a town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany).

Origin of cleves

From French Clèves, from Old High German Cleve, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *klibą (“cliff”). Cognate with English cliff. There is no connection with German Klee (“clover”), the clovers in the city's coat of arms being an example of canting arms.

Questions about cleves

What does cleves mean?
Cleves means kleve (a town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany).
What is cleves the plural of?
Cleves is the plural of cleve.
What part of speech is cleves?
Cleves is a proper noun.

Words near cleves in the dictionary

  1. cleverness
  2. clevernesses
  3. cleversome
  4. cleversticks
  5. Cleverton
  6. cleves
  7. clevidipine
  8. Clevinger
  9. Clevingers
  10. clevis
  11. clevis pin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cleves (page history and authors); Cleves (page history and authors); cleve (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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Cite this entry: “cleves.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cleves. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.