Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To move freely back and forth or up and down in the air, as branches in the wind.
  • intransitive verb To make a signal with an up-and-down or back-and-forth movement of the hand or an object held in the hand.
  • intransitive verb To have an undulating or wavy form; curve or curl.
  • intransitive verb To cause to move back and forth or up and down, either once or repeatedly.
  • intransitive verb To move or swing as in giving a signal: synonym: flourish.
  • intransitive verb To signal or express by waving the hand or an object held in the hand.
  • intransitive verb To signal (a person) by using the hand to move in a specified direction.
  • intransitive verb To arrange into curves, curls, or undulations.
  • noun A ridge or swell moving through or along the surface of a large body of water.
  • noun A small ridge or swell moving across the interface of two fluids and dependent on surface tension.
  • noun The sea.
  • noun Something that suggests the form and motion of a wave in the sea, especially.
  • noun A moving curve or succession of curves in or on a surface; an undulation.
  • noun A curve or succession of curves, as in the hair.
  • noun A curved shape, outline, or pattern.
  • noun A movement up and down or back and forth.
  • noun A surge or rush, as of sensation.
  • noun A sudden great rise, as in activity or intensity.
  • noun A rising trend that involves large numbers of individuals.
  • noun One of a succession of mass movements.
  • noun A maneuver in which fans at a sports event simulate an ocean wave by rising quickly in sequence with arms upraised and then quickly sitting down again in a continuous rolling motion.
  • noun A widespread, persistent meteorological condition, especially of temperature.
  • noun A disturbance that travels through a medium. Energy is transferred by a wave from one region of the medium to another without causing any permanent displacement of the medium.
  • noun A graphic representation of the variation of such a disturbance with time.
  • noun A single cycle of a periodic wave.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A manufacturers' name for a defect in articles of glass, consisting in a slightly protuberant ridge on the surface due to the glass having cooled irregularly and too much before blowing.
  • To move up and down or to and fro; undulate; fluctuate; bend or sway back and forth; flutter.
  • To have an undulating form or direction; curve alternately in opposite directions.
  • To give a signal by a gesture of movement up and down or to and fro.
  • To waver in mind; vacillate.
  • To move to and fro; cause to shake, rock, or sway; brandish.
  • Specifically To offer as a wave-offering. See wave-offering.
  • To shape or dispose in undulations; cause to wind in and out, as a line in curves, or a surface in ridges and furrows.
  • To decorate with a waving or winding pattern.
  • To signal by a wave of the hand, or of a flag, a handkerchief, or the like; direct by a waving gesture or other movement, as in beckoning.
  • To express, as a command, direction, farewell, etc., by a waving movement or gesture.
  • To water, as silk. See water, v. t., 3.
  • A former spelling of waive.
  • An obsolete preterit of weave.
  • noun A disturbance of the surface of a body in the form of a ridge and trough, propagated by forces tending to restore the surface to its figure of equilibrium, the particles not advancing with the wave.
  • noun Water; a stream; the sea.
  • noun A form assumed by parts of a body which are out of equilibrium, such that as fast as the particles return they are replaced by others moving into neighboring positions of stress, so that the whole disturbance is continually propagated into new parts of the body while preserving more or less perfectly the same shape and other characters.
  • noun One of a series of curves in a waving line, or of ridges in a furrowed surface; an undulation; a swell.
  • noun Figuratively, a flood, influx, or rush of anything, marked by unusual volume, extent, uprising. etc., and thus contrasted with preceding and following periods of the opposite character; something that swells like a sea-wave at recurring intervals; often, a period of intensity, activity, or important results: as, a wave of religious enthusiasm; waves of prosperity.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English waven, from Old English wafian; see webh- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

See waive.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English waven, from Old English wafian ("to wave, fluctuate, waver in mind, wonder"), from Proto-Germanic *wabōnan, *wabjanan (“to wander, sway”), from Proto-Indo-European *webh- (“to move to and from, wander”). Cognate with Middle High German waben ("to wave"), Icelandic váfa ("to fluctuate, waver, doubt"). See also waver.

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Examples

  • IMPORT:transormers nerrd seriously if he takes another and full of classic transformers and throws them in a desert i will be very upset, completely ignoring their story lines and introducing sound wave was a big mistake because of the first film "TRANSFORMERS"not G-1 pushed frenzy in with out bringing in sound wave_ rewrite the script before you make the film, ask a couple of original TF fans if it works out, not your toilet_anyway all we can do is wait nothing more nothing less OR go to his house with a stack of vhs tapes of the original series and a box of marvel comics,trans formers spotlight comics.

    Michael Bay Has Story And Is Starting Work On Transformers 3 For 2011 Release | /Film 2009

  • But even Wilson, in spite of himself, was caught in the word wave of the moment, introducing in his work such now-familiar made-in-Ancient-Greek ideas as metaphor, allegory, image, and of course rhetorique itself, his Renaissance English for rhetoric.

    The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

  • But even Wilson, in spite of himself, was caught in the word wave of the moment, introducing in his work such now-familiar made-in-Ancient-Greek ideas as metaphor, allegory, image, and of course rhetorique itself, his Renaissance English for rhetoric.

    The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

  • As you can see it still needs some work – the repetitive sin wave is far too obvious at this scale – but the function is actually very flexible and after some experimentation with values and some more variation I think it will be fine.

    Simplex Noise : KillerCodingNinjaBunny 2009

  • Martha Coakley, the Democrat was 30 points ahead in the early polls, and I don't think that she saw the title wave of discontent that was coming, that Scott Brown, the Republican is riding so effectively.

    CNN Transcript Jan 19, 2010 2010

  • As a narrative idea, Roth's latest brain wave is down there with the one animating The Breast (1972) — perhaps even lower, because at least the Breast had Kafka's cockroach for a predecessor.

    Fatherland 2004

  • As a narrative idea, Roth's latest brain wave is down there with the one animating The Breast (1972) — perhaps even lower, because at least the Breast had Kafka's cockroach for a predecessor.

    Fatherland 2004

  • The motion of the surface of the sea falls within that formula, and hence is a special variety of wave motion, and the term wave has acquired in popular use this signification and nothing else.

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 275, April 9, 1881 Various

  • • To summarize, the term wave implies three general notions: vibrations in time, disturbances in space, and moving disturbances in space-time associated with the transfer / transformation of energy.

    Recently Uploaded Slideshows 2009

  • GINGRICH: If we had Mayor Giuliani for governor and we had Governor Pataki for senator we would be a large step toward the title wave which would make 2010 comparable to 1994.

    WNYC New York Public Radio 2009

Comments

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  • I'm looking for some awful surfer slang for wave for a little project I'm doing. I'm aware of tube but any other suggestions would be appreciated.

    December 22, 2007

  • Hi Bilby here's a haiku about surfing i wrote for a client last year.

    in love by the pond

    A frog on a lily pad

    is aqua planning

    December 22, 2007

  • Hi michaelchang, thanks. I'm looking for the wave, man, as much as the action. Pipeline vibe, you dig?

    December 22, 2007

  • Why was I looking for awful surfer slang a year ago? *shakes head*

    Sometimes I feel like an extra in the movie of my life.

    April 25, 2009

  • Wordie has that effect on people.

    May 1, 2009

  • "21. A book-name of certain geometrid moths. Thus, Acidalia rubricata is the tawny wave; A. contiguaria is Greening's wave; Venusia cambraria is the Welsh wave, etc."

    --Century Dictionary

    March 3, 2011