hive
/haɪv/
hive noun: a structure, whether artificial or natural, for housing a swarm of honeybees.
Noun (1)
hive (plural hives)
- A structure, whether artificial or natural, for housing a swarm of honeybees.
- First, for thy Bees a quiet Station find, / And lodge 'em under Covert of the Wind: / For Winds, when homeward they return, will drive / The loaded Carriers from their Ev'ning Hive.1697, Virgil, “The Fourth Book of the Georgics”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, lines 10–13
- Synonyms:
- beehive
- The bees of one hive; a swarm of bees.
- When that the general is not like the hive, to whom the foragers shall all repair, what honey is expected?c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
- A place swarming with busy occupants; a crowd.
- There the horde of Roman robbers mock at a barbarous adversary. / There the hive of Roman liars worship a gluttonous emperor-idiot.1864, Alfred Tennyson, “[Experiments.] Boädicea”, in Enoch Arden, &c., London: Edward Moxon & Co., […], →OCLC, stanza 3, page 170
- A section of the registry.
- Windows builds the registry from the five registry hives[…]2006, Jean Andrews, Fixing Windows XP, page 352
- For devices built with hive-based registry implementation, the registry data are broken into three different hives — the boot hive, system hive, and user hive.2011, Samuel Phung, Professional Microsoft Windows Embedded CE 6.0
Verb
hive (third-person singular simple present hives, present participle hiving, simple past and past participle hived)
- To collect (bees) into a hive.
- to hive a swarm of bees
- To store (something other than bees) in, or as if in, a hive.
- Hiving wisdom with each studious year.1816, Lord Byron, “Canto III”, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Canto the Third, London: […] [F]or John Murray, […], →OCLC, (please specify the stanza number)
- To form a hive-like entity.
- To take lodging or shelter together; to reside in a collective body.
- The patch is kind enough, but a huge feeder, / Snail-slow in profit, and he sleeps by day / More than the wild-cat; drones hive not with me; / Therefore I part with him; and part with him / To one what I would have him help to waste / His borrowed purse. […]c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
- […] to get into warmer houses, and hive together in cities1725, Alexander Pope, letter to Martha Blount
- Of insects: to enter or possess a hive.
Noun (2)
hive (plural hives)
- An itchy, red, swollen area of the skin; singular or attributive form of hives.
- […] if you are allergic to it, the skin produces a localized red, itchy reaction, a hive. The hive appears within minutes of the allergy skin test and lasts up to approximately 24 hours.2003, Christopher H. Fanta, Lynda M. Cristiano, Kenan E. Haver, The Harvard Medical School Guide to Taking Control of Asthma: A Comprehensive Prevention and Treatment Plan for You and Your Family...
- Most people will develop a small, itchy hive at the site of the sting that will subside in 30 to 60 minutes (sting may be accompanied by burning pain). Each ant inflicts seven to eight stings. Within 4 hours, a small blister will develop at the site.2003, Dennis Krebs, Special Operations Mission Planning Field Guide, Jones & Bartlett Learning, →ISBN, page 74
hive meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
hive in Tamil
- தேன் கூடு
hive in Urdu
- چھتہ
hive in Bengali
- হাইভ
hive in Malayalam
- തേനീച്ചവളർത്തലിനുപയോഗിക്കുന്ന കൂട, കൊട്ട, തേനീച്ചക്കൂട്, തേനീച്ചക്കൂട്ടം
More languagesFewer languages
- hive in Kannada
- ಜೇನು ಹುಟ್ಟು, ಜೇನು ಹಟ್ಟಿ, ಜೇನುಗೂಡು, ಹುಟ್ಟು
- hive in Odia
- ହାଇଭ୍
- hive in Assamese
- চাক sak
- hive in Nepali
- हाइभ, हाइभ गर्न
Examples of hive in a sentence
- Itchy, hive-like bumps turn into solid knotlike eruptions, which can last from a few days to several months.2003 January 20, Editors of Parents Magazine, The Parents Answer Book: From Birth Through Age Three, Macmillan, →ISBN, page 567:
- [She had an] itchy hive reaction on her chest—it always seemed to happen when she talked to her mother.(Can we date this quote?), Tamie Dearen, Promise of Hope: Christian Christmas Romance, Tamie Dearen:
- [...] a bite or a hive, he wasn't sure which, but it was bloody itchy.2018 January 11, Jo Spain, The Confession: A totally addictive psychological thriller with shocking twists and turns, Quercus, →ISBN:
- A hard, burning button erupted on my forehead, an itchy hive.2021, Alexander Lobrano, My Place at the Table: A Recipe for a Delicious Life in Paris, Rux Martin/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, →ISBN, page...
Synonyms of hive
Forms of hive
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | hives |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | hives |
| present participle | hiving |
| past participle | hived |
| past | hived |
Origin of hive
From Middle English hyve, from Old English hȳf, from Proto-West Germanic *hūfi, from Proto-Indo-European *kuHp- (“water vessel”), from *kew- (“to bend, curve”). See also Dutch huif (“beehive”), Danish dialect huv (“ship’s hull”); also Latin cūpa (“tub, vat”), Ancient Greek κύπη (kúpē, “gap, hole”), κύπελλον (kúpellon, “beaker”), Sanskrit कूप (kū́pa, “cave”). Doublet of coupe, cup, and keeve. The computing term was chosen as an in-joke relating to bees; see this for more.
Words formed from hive
Phrases with hive
Words that rhyme with hive
34 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about hive
- What does hive mean?
- Hive means a structure, whether artificial or natural, for housing a swarm of honeybees.
- What is hive in Tamil?
- Hive in Tamil is தேன் கூடு. See Hive meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use hive in a sentence?
- Itchy, hive-like bumps turn into solid knotlike eruptions, which can last from a few days to several months.
- What part of speech is hive?
- Hive can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce hive?
- Hive is pronounced /haɪv/ (UK).
- What is the plural of hive?
- The plural of hive is hives.
Words near hive in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: hive (page history and authors); hive (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hive (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hive (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); hive (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hive (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hive (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); চাক (Assamese) (page history and authors); hive (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-hive.wav.
Cite this entry: “hive.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.