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waive. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
waive, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
waive in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
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English
Alternative forms
Pronunciation
Etymology 1
From Middle English weyven (“to avoid, renounce”), from Anglo-Norman weyver (“to abandon, allow to become a waif”), from Old French waif (“waif”), from gaiver (“to abandon”), ultimately of Scandinavian/North Germanic origin; see weyver.
Verb
waive (third-person singular simple present waives, present participle waiving, simple past and past participle waived)
- (transitive, law) To relinquish (a right etc.); to give up claim to; to forgo.
If you waive the right to be silent, anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.
- (particularly) To relinquish claim on a payment or fee which would otherwise be due.
- (now rare) To put aside, avoid.
- a. 1683, Isaac Barrow, Sermon LIX, “Of obedience to our spiritual guides and governors”:
- seeing in many such occasions of common life we advisedly do renounce or waive our own opinions, absolutely yielding to the direction of others
- (obsolete) To outlaw (someone).
- (obsolete) To abandon, give up (someone or something).
1851, Alexander Mansfield Burrill, Law Dictionary and Glossary:but she might be waived, and held as abandoned.
Derived terms
Related terms
Translations
to relinquish; to give up claim to
Etymology 2
From Middle English weyven (“to wave, waver”), from Old Norse veifa (“to wave, swing”) (Norwegian veiva), from Proto-Germanic *waibijaną.
Verb
waive (third-person singular simple present waives, present participle waiving, simple past and past participle waived)
- (obsolete) To move from side to side; to sway.
- (intransitive, obsolete) To stray, wander.
Translations
Etymology 3
From Anglo-Norman waive, probably as the past participle of weyver, as Etymology 1, above.
Noun
waive (plural waives)
- (obsolete, law) A woman put out of the protection of the law; an outlawed woman.
- (obsolete) A waif; a castaway.
1624, John Donne, Deuotions upon Emergent Occasions, and Seuerall Steps in My Sicknes: , London: Printed by A[ugustine] M[atthews] for Thomas Iones, →OCLC; republished as Geoffrey Keynes, edited by John Sparrow, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions: , Cambridge: At the University Press, 1923, →OCLC:[…] what a wretched, and disconsolate hermitage is that house, which is not visited by thee, and what a waive and stray is that man, that hath not thy marks upon him?
Translations
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