Definitions

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

  • transitive verb To give up (a claim or right, for example) voluntarily; relinquish. synonym: relinquish.
  • transitive verb To refrain from insisting on or enforcing (a rule, penalty, or requirement, for example); dispense with.
  • transitive verb To refrain from engaging in, sometimes temporarily; cancel or postpone.
  • transitive verb Sports To place (a player) on waivers.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A waif; a poor homeless wretch; a castaway.
  • noun In law, a woman put out of the protection of the law.
  • To refuse; forsake; decline; shun.
  • To move; remove; push aside.
  • To relinquish; forsake; forbear to insist on or claim; defer for the present; forgo: as, to waive a subject; to waive a claim or privilege.
  • In law:
  • To relinquish intentionally (a known right), or intentionally to do an act inconsistent with claiming (it). See waiver.
  • To throw away, as a thief stolen goods in his flight.
  • In old English law, to put out of the protection of the law, as a woman.
  • To depart; deviate.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun obsolete A waif; a castaway.
  • noun (O. Eng. Law) A woman put out of the protection of the law. See Waive, v. t., 3 (b), and the Note.
  • intransitive verb obsolete To turn aside; to recede.
  • transitive verb To relinquish; to give up claim to; not to insist on or claim; to refuse; to forego.
  • transitive verb To throw away; to cast off; to reject; to desert.
  • transitive verb To throw away; to relinquish voluntarily, as a right which one may enforce if he chooses.
  • transitive verb (O. Eng. Law) To desert; to abandon.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun obsolete, law A woman put out of the protection of the law; an outlawed woman.
  • verb obsolete To move from side to side; to sway.
  • verb intransitive, obsolete To stray, wander.
  • noun Obsolete form of waif.
  • verb obsolete To outlaw (someone).
  • verb obsolete To abandon, give up (someone or something).
  • verb transitive, law To relinquish (a right etc.); to give up claim to; to forego.
  • verb To put aside, avoid.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb do without or cease to hold or adhere to
  • verb lose (s.th.) or lose the right to (s.th.) by some error, offense, or crime

Etymologies

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

[Middle English weiven, to abandon, from Anglo-Norman weyver, from waif, ownerless property; see waif.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Anglo-Norman waive, probably as the past participle of weyver, as Etymology 1, above.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Middle English weyven, from Old Norse veifa ("to wave, swing") (Norwegian veiva), from Proto-Germanic *waibijanan.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Variant forms.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Middle English weyven, from Anglo-Norman weyver ("to abandon, allow to become a waif"), from weyf ("waif").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word waive.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • here used in the sense of moving 'to and fro'

    March 8, 2010