lyven

• leeve, lefe, leve, leven, libbe, libben, lifen, live, liven, lybbe, lyve
• (Early ME) libbæn, libbenn, livie, livien, luvien

From Old English libban, lifian, from Proto-West Germanic *libbjan, from Proto-Germanic *libjaną.

• IPA^(key): /ˈlivən/
• (mainly Northern) IPA^(key): /ˈleːvən/

lyven (third-person singular simple present lyveth, present participle lyvende, lyvynge, first-/third-person singular past indicative and past participle lyved)

1. (intransitive) To live (be alive or extant)
2. (intransitive) To live (survive, continue living)
   • c. 1368, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Book of the Duchess, as recorded c. 1440–1450 in Bodleian Library MS. Fairfax 16, folio 130r:

     I Haue grete wonder, be this lyghte / How that I lyve, for day ne nyghte / I may nat slepe, wel nygh noght

     I greatly wonder by this light / How it is that I’m alive, for whether it’s day or night / I can hardly sleep at all.

3. (intransitive, of inanimate objects and abstractions) To persist; to continue to exist.
4. (intransitive) To reside or dwell; to live (somewhere).
5. (intransitive) To live (in a certain way or condition)
6. (intransitive, with various prepositions) To subsist or live on.
7. (transitive) To live as (something), to exist as, to live the life of.

• English: live
• Scots: leeve
• Yola: live

• “liven, v.(1).”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.