dave
/deɪv/
dave verb: to assuage; soften; mitigate; relieve; calm; alleviate (pain).
Verb
dave (third-person singular simple present daves, present participle daving, simple past and past participle daved)
Proper noun capitalized: Dave
Dave
- A diminutive of the male given name David, also used as a formal given name.
- David, with its final "d", sounds finished and complete, whereas Dave just kind of hangs there in the air, indefinitely. - - - Worse, if your name is Dave, the only possible nickname is "Davey", which makes you sound like you should be wearing a coonskin cap.1994, Caroline Knapp, The Merry Recluse: A Life in Essays, Counterpoint Press, published 2004, →ISBN, pages 169, 170
- Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy said he would send two customers to tour a former Nazi concentration camp after they allegedly engaged in antisemitic behavior at a Barstool pub in Philadelphia, then later retracted that offer for at least one of them because he said the person was denying...2025 May 5, “Barstool Sports founder retracts Auschwitz tour offer to customer in antisemitic sign incident”, in Associated Press, archived from the original on 07 May 2025
- A surname from Gujarati from Gujarati દવે (dave, “(one who has studied) two Vedas”).
- A female given name.
Forms of dave
| third-person singular present | daves |
|---|---|
| present participle | daving |
| past participle | daved |
| past | daved |
| alternative form | daive |
| alternative form | deave |
| alternative form | deve |
Origin of dave
From Middle English deven, deaven (“to make deaf”), from Old English dēafian (“to wax or become deaf”) and Old Norse deyfa (“to make deaf, make blunt, numb, soothe, allay”). Cognate with dialectal Norwegian døyva (“to deafen, make dull”).
Words formed from dave
Phrases with dave
Words that rhyme with dave
Questions about dave
- What does dave mean?
- Dave means to assuage; soften; mitigate; relieve; calm; alleviate (pain).
- What part of speech is dave?
- Dave can be a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce dave?
- Dave is pronounced /deɪv/.
- What is the past tense of dave?
- The past tense of dave is daved.
Words near dave in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dave (page history and authors); Dave (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)-Wodencafe-dave.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Dave.wav.
Cite this entry: “dave.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dave. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.