Word.ws English Dictionary

thrave

thrave verb: to urge; compel; importune.

Verb

thrave (third-person singular simple present thraves, present participle thraving, simple past and past participle thraved)

  1. (UK, dialectal, transitive) To urge; compel; importune.

Noun

thrave (plural thraves)

  1. (UK, dialectal) A sheaf; a handful (of crops).
  2. (UK, dialectal, obsolete) A specified number (twenty-six, twenty-four, twelve, etc., depending on the place) of sheaves of a crop (wheat, oats, corn etc.); compare shock and stook, also a certain number of sheaves.
    • A daimen icker in a thrave / 'S a sma' request;1785, Robert Burns, To a Mouse
  3. (UK, dialectal, obsolete) Two dozen, or similar indefinite number; a bunch; a throng.
    • c. 16th century, Lansdowne manuscript
      The worst of a thrave.
    • He sends forth thraves of ballads to the sale.1597, [Joseph Hall], “(please specify the page)”, in Virgidemiarum, Sixe Bookes. First Three Bookes, of Tooth-lesse Satyrs. […], London: […] Thomas Creede, for Robert Dexter, →OCLC

Forms of thrave

Verb
third-person singular presentthraves
present participlethraving
past participlethraved
pastthraved
Noun
pluralthraves
alternative formthreave
alternative formthreve

Origin of thrave

From Middle English thraven, from Old English þrafian (“to press; urge; compel; rebuke; argue; contend”), from Proto-West Germanic *þrabōn, from Proto-Germanic *þrabōną (“to press; drive”), from Proto-Indo-European *trep- (“to scamper; trample; quake; tread”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian troawje, droawje (“to trot”), West Frisian drave (“to trot”), Dutch draven (“to lope; trot”), German traben (“to trot”), Swedish trava (“to trot”), Icelandic þrefa (“to wrangle; dispute”).

From Middle English thrave, threve, thrafe, from Old Norse þrefi (“a bunch or handful of sheaves”), related to Old Norse þrifa (“to grasp”). Cognate with Swedish trave, Danish trave.

Words that rhyme with thrave

29 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about thrave

What does thrave mean?
Thrave means to urge; compel; importune.
What part of speech is thrave?
Thrave can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of thrave?
The past tense of thrave is thraved.

Words near thrave in the dictionary

  1. Thrasymachian
  2. thraupid
  3. thraupids
  4. thraustochytrid
  5. thraustochytrids
  6. thrave
  7. thraved
  8. thraves
  9. thraving
  10. thrawcrook
  11. thrawcrooks

Source and license

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