nave
/neɪv/
nave noun: the middle or body of a church, extending from the transepts to the principal entrances.
Noun (1)
nave (plural naves)
- The middle or body of a church, extending from the transepts to the principal entrances.
- Then everybody once more knelt, and soon the blessing was pronounced. The choir and the clergy trooped out slowly, […], down the nave to the western door. […] At a seemingly immense distance the surpliced group stopped to say the last prayer.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter V, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
- The ground-level middle cavity of a barn.
Noun (2)
nave (plural naves)
- A hub of a wheel.
- 'Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune! All you gods,
In general synod take away her power;
Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven[…]c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac... - In the original context of the World Wide Web the ’authorities’ are information sources, whereas herein the ’authorities’ are the material sinks. The hubs remain the ’naves’ in the link structure but are the sources of material. Continuing the wheel analogy, the authorities would be ‘spoke nipples’2024, Thérèse G. Lee Chan, David A. Janes, Kyle P. Joshua, “Filtering ‘3–2’ industrial symbiosis networks at a carbon-intensive cluster in a small island developing state to reuse CO₂ and water”, in...
- 'Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune! All you gods,
- The navel.
- Till he faced the slave; / Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him, / Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps, / And fix'd his head upon our battlementsc. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
Proper noun capitalized: Nave
Nave (plural Naves)
- A surname.
nave meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Telugu
nave in Tamil
- குழிசி
nave in Urdu
- ناف چرخ, پہیے کا وسط, وسط کلیسا
nave in Bengali
- গির্জার মধ্যবর্তী অংশ, চাকার নাভি
nave in Telugu
- the nave or centre of a wheel
- పిండిక piṇḍika, దిండు diṇḍu
More languagesFewer languages
- nave in Malayalam
- ഹൈക്കല haikkala
- nave in Kannada
- ಗುಂಬ, ಚಕ್ರನಾಭಿ, ಚರ್ಚಿನ ಮಧ್ಯಾಂಗಣ
- nave in Tagalog
- nabe
- nave in Arabic
- صَحْن ṣaḥn
Examples of nave in a sentence
- The hubs remain the ’naves’ in the link structure but are the sources of material.
- The cook-house was like a cathedral's nave, aisles being divided off by the pipes of stoves.
- In the middle of the nave was erected a magnificent jube, where the throne of Charles X. was placed.
Forms of nave
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | naves |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Naves |
Origin of nave
Ultimately from Latin nāvem, singular accusative of nāvis, possibly via a Romance source. Doublet of nef and nau.
From Middle English nave, from Old English nafu, from Proto-West Germanic *nabu, from Proto-Germanic *nabō (compare Dutch naaf, German Nabe, Swedish nav), from Proto-Indo-European *h₃nebʰ- (“navel, hub”) (compare Latin umbō (“shield boss”), Latvian naba, Sanskrit नभ्य (nabhya)).
* As an English surname, from the noun knave. * As a German surname Näve, variant of Neff, see Neve. * As a Portuguese surname, from nave (“plain”), borrowed from Spanish nava, compare Nava.
Words formed from nave
Words that rhyme with nave
Questions about nave
- What does nave mean?
- Nave means the middle or body of a church, extending from the transepts to the principal entrances.
- What is nave in Tamil?
- Nave in Tamil is குழிசி. See Nave meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is nave?
- Nave can be a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce nave?
- Nave is pronounced /neɪv/.
- What is the plural of nave?
- The plural of nave is naves.
Words near nave in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: nave (page history and authors); Nave (page history and authors); nave (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); nave (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); nave (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); దిండు (Telugu) (page history and authors); nave (Kannada Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-nave.wav.
Cite this entry: “nave.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nave. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.