Word.ws English Dictionary

shive

/ʃaɪv/

shive noun: a slice, especially of bread. Also the alternative form of shiv.

Noun (1)

shive (plural shives)

  1. A slice, especially of bread.
    • Of a cut loafe to steale a shiuec. 1588–1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac...
    • In my cool room with the shutters shut and the thin shives of air and light coming through the slats, I cried myself to sleep in an overloud selfpitying transport.1980, Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers
  2. (obsolete) A sheave.
  3. A beam or plank of split wood.
  4. A flat, wide cork for plugging a large hole or closing a wide-mouthed bottle.
    • If the conditioning continues to be fairly brisk, a wooden tut might appear to distort a little under the stress of the internal pressure, with the beer seeping out around the tut and shive.2011, John Alexander, A Guide to Craft Brewing

Noun (2)

shive (plural shives)

  1. A splinter or fragment of the woody core of flax or hemp broken off in braking or scutching
    Synonyms:
    shiv, boon, shove, hurd
  2. A plant fragment remaining in scoured wool.
  3. A piece of thread or fluff on the surface of cloth or other material.
  4. A dark particle or impurity in finished paper resulting from a bundle of incompletely cooked wood fibres in the pulp.

Proper noun capitalized: Shive

Shive (plural Shives)

  1. A surname.

Also used as

shive is also the alternative form of shiv.

shive is also the alternative spelling of shiva.

Synonyms of shive

Forms of shive

Noun
pluralshives
Proper noun
pluralShives

Origin of shive

A parallel form of sheave, from Middle English schyve, from Proto-West Germanic *skībā, from Proto-Germanic *skībǭ, presumably through an Old English *sċīfe (though it is not attested before the Middle English period). Cognate with German Scheibe, late Old Norse skífa (“slice”), brauðskífa (“slice of bread”) (whence Danish skive (“disc, slice”)), Dutch schijf (“disc, slice”).

From Middle English schyfe, schyffe, from Proto-Germanic *skibō-; cognate with German Schäbe, Dutch scheef, and Low German Schääv, all ‘fragment of the woody core of flax or hemp’. The expected pronunciation would be /ʃɪv/; the pronunciation /ʃaɪv/ is probably due to the combined influence of Etymology 1 and the spelling.

Variant of shiv.

Words formed from shive

  • sit shive

Words that rhyme with shive

34 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about shive

What does shive mean?
Shive means a slice, especially of bread.
What part of speech is shive?
Shive can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce shive?
Shive is pronounced /ʃaɪv/.
What is the plural of shive?
The plural of shive is shives.

Words near shive in the dictionary

  1. shivaried
  2. shivaries
  3. shivariing
  4. shivaris
  5. shivas
  6. shive
  7. shived
  8. Shiveley
  9. Shiveleys
  10. Shively
  11. Shivelys

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shive (page history and authors); Shive (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:

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

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