cloves
UK/kləʊvz/US/kloʊvz/
cloves is the plural of clove.
Meaning of clove
Noun (1)
clove (countable and uncountable, plural cloves)
- A very pungent aromatic spice, the unexpanded flower bud of the clove tree.
- A clove tree, of the species Syzygium aromaticum (syn. Caryophyllus aromaticus), native to the Moluccas (Indonesian islands), which produces the spice.
- An old English measure of weight, containing 7 pounds (3.2 kg), i.e. half a stone.
- Seven pounds make a clove, 2 cloves a stone, 2 stone a tod, 6+¹⁄₂ tods a wey, 2 weys a sack, 12 sacks a last. The 'Pathway' points out the etymology of the word cloves; it calls them ' claves or nails.' It is to be observed here that a sack is 13 tods, and a tod 28 pounds, so that the sack is 364...1843, The Penny Cyclopaedia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, volume 27, page 202
Noun (2)
clove (plural cloves)
- One of the small bulbs that make up the large, compound bulb in garlic, shallots, or similar plants.
- clove of garlic, garlic clove, clove of a sea-onion, clove of shallot, cloves of bulbs
- A segment or natural division of a fruit.
- [W]e hurried by […] past the meatfaced woman, a butcher's dame, nuzzling thirstily her clove of orange.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 2: Nestor]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC, part I [Telemachia], page 32
Noun (3)
clove (plural cloves)
Phrases with cloves
Words that rhyme with cloves
Questions about cloves
- What is cloves the plural of?
- Cloves is the plural of clove.
- How do you pronounce cloves?
- Cloves is pronounced /kləʊvz/ (UK).
Words near cloves in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cloves (page history and authors); clove (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: “cloves.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cloves. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.