salving

Verb (1)

salve (third-person singular simple present salves, present participle salving, simple past and past participle salved)

1. (transitive) To calm or assuage.
   • She feels guilty for pampering him, and salves her conscience by bossily ordering him to go and fetch the clothes from the line[.]1985, Joan Morrison, Share House Blues, Boolarong Publications, page 26
2. To heal by applications or medicaments; to apply salve to; to anoint.
   • I do beseech your majesty […] salve the long-grown wounds of my intemperance."c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
3. To heal; to remedy; to cure; to make good.
   • But Ebranck salved both their infamies / With noble deedes.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 21
4. (dated) To salvage.
   • The interior woodwork was largely salved from the two cars, as well as the majority of the fittings and seats.1942 March, “Notes and News: Repairing Blitzed Underground Cars”, in Railway Magazine, page 90

Verb (2)

salve (third-person singular simple present salves, present participle salving, simple past and past participle salved)

1. (obsolete) To save (the appearances or the phenomena); to explain (a celestial phenomenon); to account for (the apparent motions of the celestial bodies).
2. (obsolete) To resolve (a difficulty); to refute (an objection); to harmonize (an apparent contradiction).
   • He which should hold it more rational to make the whole Universe move, and thereby to salve the Earths mobility, is more unreasonable....1661, Thomas Salusbury, transl., Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

See all 11 meanings of salve