hive off
hive off verb: to separate from a larger group.
Verb
hive off (third-person singular simple present hives off, present participle hiving off, simple past and past participle hived off)
- To separate from a larger group.
- Synonyms:
- branch off, fork off, split off
- To segregate; to remove from a parent entity.
- If the Government believes that part of the railways' salvation is to be found in ridding them of extraneous concerns, it should have had the courage either to close the railway works down as quickly as possible, or to hive them off as an entirely separate concern, [...].1964 May, “News and Comment: Minister hamstrings BR workshops”, in Modern Railways, page 291
- The plan involves banks hiving off bad assets and investors buying them at a discount on hopes of turning a profit over time.2009 March 25, Felicity Williams, Fleur Leyden, “Commodities rally in big price rout”, in Herald Sun, archived from the original on 27 Mar 2009
Synonyms of hive off
Forms of hive off
| third-person singular present | hives off |
|---|---|
| present participle | hiving off |
| past participle | hived off |
| past | hived off |
Origin of hive off
Likely from the way a swarm of bees splits off from one hive to establish a second hive.
Words formed from hive off
Questions about hive off
- What does hive off mean?
- Hive off means to separate from a larger group.
- What part of speech is hive off?
- Hive off is a verb.
- What is the past tense of hive off?
- The past tense of hive off is hived off.
Words near hive off in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: hive off (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: “hive off.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hive_off. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.