Word.ws English Dictionary

gave over

gave over is the simple past of give over.

Meaning of give over

Verb

give over (third-person singular simple present gives over, present participle giving over, simple past gave over, past participle given over)

  1. (archaic, transitive) To give up, hand over, surrender (something).
    • Diocletian, the emperor, was so much affected with it that he gave over his sceptre and turned gardener.1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition II...
  2. (transitive) To entrust (something) to another.
    • She gave the deeds over to the solicitor.
  3. (transitive) To devote or resign to a particular purpose or activity; to yield completely.
    • The factory has been entirely given over to aircraft manufacture.
  4. (transitive) To quit, to abandon.
    • If the bodies continued missing until Sunday, all hope would be given over, and the funerals would be preached on that morning.1876, Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, page 89
  5. (Ireland, Northern England, Scotland, UK, dialectal, intransitive) To give up; abandon; stop.
    • Give over with your nonsense, will you!

Questions about gave over

What is gave over the simple past of?
Gave over is the simple past of give over.

Words near gave over in the dictionary

  1. gave one's notice
  2. gave one's right arm
  3. gave one's word
  4. gave oneself airs
  5. gave out
  6. gave over
  7. gave pause
  8. gave paw
  9. gave pursuit
  10. gave rise to
  11. gave somebody time

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gave over (page history and authors); give over (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:

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