Word.ws English Dictionary

threave

threave is the obsolete form of thrave.

Meaning of thrave

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.

See all 4 meanings of thrave

Forms of threave

pluralthreaves

Questions about threave

What is threave the obsolete form of?
Threave is the obsolete form of thrave.

Words near threave in the dictionary

  1. threatsome
  2. threatspot
  3. threatspots
  4. Threatt
  5. Threatts
  6. threave
  7. threaves
  8. thred
  9. Thredbo
  10. threds
  11. three

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: threave (page history and authors); 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: “threave.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/threave. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.