Word.ws English Dictionary

dolven

dolven is the past participle of delve.

Meaning of delve

Verb

delve (third-person singular simple present delves, present participle delving, simple past delved or (archaic) dolve, past participle delved or (archaic) dolve or (archaic) dolven)

  1. (intransitive, literary) To dig into the ground, especially with a shovel.
    • Delve of convenient depth your thrashing floor.1697, Virgil, “(please specify the book number)”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC
  2. (ambitransitive, literary) To dig; to excavate.
    • And then they made an oratory behind the altar, and would have dolven for to have laid the body in that oratory […][1483, Jacobus de Voragine, translated by William Caxton, The Golden Legend (in Middle English)
  3. (ambitransitive, figuratively, literary) To search thoroughly and carefully for information, research, dig into, penetrate, fathom, trace out
    • I cannot delve him to the root.1611 April (first recorded performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Cymbeline”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard...

See all 5 meanings of delve

Questions about dolven

What is dolven the past participle of?
Dolven is the past participle of delve.

Words near dolven in the dictionary

  1. dolts
  2. dolus
  3. dolus specialis
  4. dolutegravir
  5. dolve
  6. dolven
  7. Dolwyddelan
  8. Dolyhir
  9. Dolyna
  10. Dolynska
  11. Dolywern

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dolven (page history and authors); delve (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: “dolven.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dolven. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.