hove

/həʊv/US/hoʊv/

hove verb: to remain suspended in air, water etc.; to float, to hover. Also the simple past and past participle of heave.

Verb (1)

hove (third-person singular simple present hoves, present participle hoving, simple past and past participle hoved)

(intransitive, obsolete) To remain suspended in air, water etc.; to float, to hover.
- As shee arrived on the roring shore, / In minde to leape into the mighty maine, / A little bote lay hoving her before[…].1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
(intransitive, obsolete) To wait, linger.
- Alle these xv knyghtes were knyghtes of the table round / Soo these with moo other came in to gyders / and bete on bak the kynge of Northumberland and the kynge of Northwalys / whan sir launcelot sawe this as he houed in a lytil leued woode / thenne he sayd vnto syre lauayn / see yonder is a...1485, Sir Thomas Malory, chapter X, in Le Morte Darthur, book XVIII
(intransitive, obsolete) To move on or by.
(dialectal, intransitive) To remain; delay.
(dialectal, intransitive) To remain stationary (usually on horseback).

Verb (2)

hove (third-person singular simple present hoves, present participle hoving, simple past and past participle hoved)

(dialectal, transitive) To raise; lift; hold up.
(dialectal, intransitive) To rise.
- Astond he stood, and vp his haire did houe, / And with that suddein horror could no member moue.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
- There was nothing else to do, and he was doing it to the best of his ability - having, in fact, fallen into a trance of admiration before a large meerschaum - when MacQuibble hove in sight on his way to the Life Class at the Gallery.1913, Norman Lindsay, A Curate in Bohemia, Sydney: N.S.W. Bookstall Co., published 1932, page 150

Proper noun capitalized: Hove

Hove

A town in the city of Brighton and Hove, on the south coast of East Sussex, England, west of Brighton (OS grid ref TQ2804).

Also used as

hove is also the simple past and past participle of heave.

Synonyms of hove

heaved

Forms of hove

third-person singular present	hoves
present participle	hoving
past participle	hoved
past	hoved
alternative form	huve
alternative form	huff
alternative form	houf

Origin of hove

From Middle English hoven (“to linger, wait, hover, move aside, entertain, cherish, foster”), from Old English *hofian (“to receive into one's house”), from Proto-Germanic *hufōną (“to house, lodge”), from Proto-Germanic *hufą (“hill, height, farm, dwelling”), from Proto-Indo-European *keup- (“to arch, bend, buckle”). Cognate with Old Frisian hovia (“to receive into one's home, entertain”), Old Dutch hoven (“to receive into one's home, entertain”). Related to Old English hof (“court, house, dwelling”). More at hovel.

From Middle English hoven, alteration (due to hove, hoven, past tense and past participle of heven (“to heave”)). More at heave.

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

Words formed from hove

Brighton and Hove

Phrases with hove

Words that rhyme with hove

41 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about hove

What does hove mean?: Hove means to remain suspended in air, water etc.; to float, to hover.
What part of speech is hove?: Hove can be a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce hove?: Hove is pronounced /həʊv/ (UK).
What is the past tense of hove?: The past tense of hove is hoved.

Words near hove in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: hove (page history and authors); Hove (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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-hove.wav.

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