shove
/ʃʌv/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
Northern England/ʃʊv/
shove verb: to push, especially roughly or with force. Also the simple past of shave.
Verb
shove (third-person singular simple present shoves, present participle shoving, simple past shoved, past participle shoved or (obsolete) shoven)
- To push, especially roughly or with force.
- So, after a spell, he decided to make the best of it and shoved us into the front parlor. 'Twas a dismal sort of place, with hair wreaths, and wax fruit, and tin lambrekins, and land knows what all1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter XII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC
- The ship was anon shoven in the sea.1470–1485 (date produced), Thomas Malory, “(please specify the chapter)”, in [Le Morte Darthur], (please specify the book number), [London: […] by William Caxton], published 31 July 1485, →OCLC...
- To move off or along by an act of pushing, as with an oar or pole used in a boat; sometimes with off.
- He grasped the oar, received his guests on board, and shoved from shore.1699, Samuel Garth, The Dispensary
- To make an all-in bet.
- To pass (counterfeit money).
- To put hurriedly
Noun
shove (plural shoves)
- A rough push.
- I rested […] and then gave the boat another shove.1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume I, London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […], →OCLC, part I (A Voyage to Lilliput)
- An all-in bet.
- A forward movement of packed river-ice.
Also used as
shove is also the simple past of shave.
Examples of shove in a sentence
- Well, it looks like it's time to go. Let's shove off.
- He pushed and shoved his way to the stage to steal the microphone from the singer.
- Rogers got the thumb for shoving the linesman after being called offside.
Forms of shove
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | shoves |
| present participle | shoving |
| past | shoved |
| past participle | shoved |
| past participle (obsolete) | shoven |
| Noun | |
| plural | shoves |
Origin of shove
From Middle English schouven, from Old English sċūfan, from Proto-West Germanic *skeuban, from Proto-Germanic *skeubaną, from Proto-Indo-European *skewbʰ-. See also West Frisian skowe, Low German schuven, Dutch schuiven, German schieben, Danish skubbe, Norwegian Bokmål skyve, Norwegian Nynorsk skuva; also Lithuanian skùbti (“to hurry”), Polish skubać (“to pluck”), Albanian humb (“to lose”).
Words formed from shove
- shool
- duckshove
- outshove
- push and shove
- shovable
- shoveable
- shove about
- shove around
- shoveboard
- shove down
- shovegroat
- shove ha'penny
- shove it
- shove-it
- shove it up your ass
- shovel
- shove off
- shove on
- shove over
- shover
- shove something down someone's throat
- shove the queer
- shove up
- shuffleboard
- tell someone where to shove it
- unshoved
- ice shove
- shove in the mouth
- shove knife
- shovey
- when push comes to shove
Phrases with shove
Words that rhyme with shove
- love
- above
- dove
- glove
- belove
- gov
- deglove
- live in the shadow of
- bruv
- fit like a glove
- for want of
- luv
1 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about shove
- What does shove mean?
- Shove means to push, especially roughly or with force.
- What part of speech is shove?
- Shove can be a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce shove?
- Shove is pronounced /ʃʌv/.
- What is the past tense of shove?
- The past tense of shove is shoved.
Words near shove in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: shove (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-shove.wav.
Cite this entry: “shove.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shove. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.