reft

/ɹɛft/

reft is the simple past and past participle of reave.

Meaning of reave

reave (third-person singular simple present reaves, present participle reaving, simple past and past participle reaved or reft)

(archaic) To plunder, pillage, rob, pirate, or remove.
- And I for one am not convinced of the innocence of the model: it is as if we let a criminal make up the law as he or she ambles along, reaving right and left.1997, Lawrence R. Schehr, Rendering French Realism, →ISBN, page 18
(archaic) To deprive (a person) of something through theft or violence.
- Few of the chroniclers of Nero’s reign have been accurate when relating the situation that obtained between the Emperor and his mother from the time when, reft of her German and Pannonian guards, she lived in a more or less solitary rage on one estate or another.1985, Anthony Burgess, Kingdom of the Wicked

reave (third-person singular simple present reaves, present participle reaving, simple past and past participle reft)

(archaic) To split, tear, break apart.
- There was the same enforced composure on her face, that there had been when she was dressing; and the wreath upon her head encircled the same cold and steady brow. But it would have been better to have seen its leaves and flowers reft into fragments by her passionate hand, […]1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1848, →OCLC

reft (plural refts)

A chink; a rift.
- If thou mayest finde any shore,
  Or hole , or reft , what ever it werec. 1360s (date written), Geffray Chaucer [i.e., Geoffrey Chaucer], “The Romaunt of the Rose”, in [William Thynne], editor, The Workes of Geffray Chaucer Newlye Printed, […], [London: […] Richard...
- At one time the summit was beautifully bathed in golden light, whilst the middle part was quite blue, and the snow of its peculiar blue-green colour in the refts. Some of the glaciers are very distinct to us, and with the telescope I can see the refts and corrugations of the different parts, and...1870, Dr. Bence Jones, chapter II, in The Life and Letters of Faraday, volume II, Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., page 146

plural	refts

What does reft mean?: Reft means a chink; a rift.
What is reft the simple past and past participle of?: Reft is the simple past and past participle of reave.
What part of speech is reft?: Reft is a noun.
How do you pronounce reft?: Reft is pronounced /ɹɛft/.
What is the plural of reft?: The plural of reft is refts.

Adapted from Wiktionary: reft (page history and authors); reave (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-reft.wav.

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