wave
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: wāv
ipa: /weɪv/
homophone: waive
rhymes: -eɪv
Forms: form: waves
Etymology: From Middle English *wave, partially from waven (“to fluctuate, wave”) (see above) and partially from Middle English wawe, waghe (“wave”), from Old English wǣg (“a wave, billow, motion, water, flood, sea”), from Proto-Germanic *wēgaz (“motion, storm, wave”), from Proto-Indo-European *weǵʰ- (“to drag, carry”). Cognate with North Frisian weage (“wave, flood, sea”), German Woge (“wave”), French vague (“wave”) (from Germanic), Gothic 𐍅𐌴𐌲𐍃 (wēgs, “a wave”). See also waw.
Senses: examples: text: The wave traveled from the center of the lake before breaking on the shore.
text: O God! can I not save / One from the pitiless wave? / Is all that we see or seem / But a dream within a dream?
ref: 1849 March 31, Edgar Allan Poe, “A Dream Within a Dream”, in The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe: […], volumes II (Poems and Miscellanies), New York, N.Y.: J. S. Redfield, […], published 1850, →OCLC, page 40:
text: The new sea wall may stop the waves from the sea, but not from the children who enthusiastically greet our train as it passes. It's great to see this ages-old habit is still going strong.
ref: 2020 December 2, Paul Bigland, “My weirdest and wackiest Rover yet”, in Rail, page 65:
glosses: A moving disturbance in the level of a body of liquid; an undulation.
examples: text: 1895, Fiona Macleod (William Sharp), The Sin-Eater and Other Tales
[…] your father Murtagh Ross, and his lawful childless wife, Dionaid, and his sister Anna—one and all, they lie beneath the green wave or in the brown mould.
text: Whoever rules the waves rules the world...
ref: 2024 January 14, Kim Darroch, “Whoever rules the waves rules the world... The Red Sea crisis will show us if that’s true”, in The Observer:
glosses: The ocean.
examples: text: Gravity waves, while predicted by theory for decades, have been notoriously difficult to detect.
topics: natural-sciences
physical-sciences
physics
glosses: A moving disturbance in the energy level of a field.
examples: text: Her hair had a nice wave to it.
text: sine wave
glosses: A shape that alternatingly curves in opposite directions.
glosses: Any of a number of species of moths in the geometrid subfamily Sterrhinae, which have wavy markings on the wings.
examples: text: He dismissed her with a wave of the hand.
glosses: A loose back-and-forth movement, as of the hands.
examples: text: A wave of shoppers stampeded through the door when the store opened for its Christmas discount special.
text: A wave of retirees began moving to the coastal area.
text: A wave of emotion overcame her when she thought about her son who was killed in battle.
text: Foster had been left unsighted by Scott Dann's positioning at his post, but the goalkeeper was about to prove his worth to Birmingham by keeping them in the game with a series of stunning saves as West Ham produced waves after wave of attack in their bid to find a crucial second goal.
ref: 2011 January 11, Jonathan Stevenson, “West Ham 2 - 1 Birmingham”, in BBC:
synonyms: rush
glosses: A sudden, but temporary, uptick in something.
qualifier: logistics
glosses: Any of a series of orders to be fulfilled in one short interval of time, planned as part of wave picking.
examples: text: New Wave
text: Korean Wave
glosses: A movement or trend in popular culture.
examples: text: As the player eliminates each wave of 55 aliens, the next wave begins lower than the one previous.
ref: 2011, Raffaele Cecco, Supercharged JavaScript Graphics: With HTML5 Canvas and jQuery:
topics: video-games
glosses: One of the successive swarms of enemies sent to attack the player in certain games.
qualifier: usually "the wave"
glosses: A group activity in a crowd imitating a wave going through water, where people in successive parts of the crowd stand and stretch upward, then sit.
Synonyms: sense: an undulation
word: und
sense: group activity
word: Mexican wave
Hyponyms: Alfvén wave
A wave
blue wave
carrier wave
cosine wave
electromagnetic wave
Elliott wave
episodic wave
gamma wave
gravitational wave
gravity-inertia wave
gravity wave
groundwave
ground wave
handwave
hand wave
harmonic wave
human wave
incident wave
Kelvin wave
Langmuir wave
light wave
longitudinal wave
longwave
long wave
Love wave
Mach wave
magnetic wave
Marshak wave
mechanical wave
mediumwave
medium wave
metachronal wave
Mexican wave
microwave
modulated wave
new wave
ocean wave
plane wave
P wave
P-wave
Q wave
Q-wave
radio wave
Rayleigh wave
release wave
rogue wave
sea wave
seismic wave
shock wave
shockwave
shortwave
short wave
sine wave
sinusoidal wave
skywave
sky wave
sound wave
standing wave
S wave
S-wave
thumbless wave
transverse wave
whispering-gallery wave
wind wave
Derived terms: aether wave
æther wave
afterwave
airwave
Alfvén wave
Alfven wave
alpha wave
audience wave
autowave
awave
Bangemann wave
beta wave
bewave
blastwave
Bloch wave
blow-wave
body wave
bow wave
brain wave
brainwave
capillary wave
catch a wave
charge-density wave
cold wave
coldwave
compression wave
continuous wave
cosmic gravitational-wave background
cosmic gravitational wave background
counterwave
crime wave
crimewave
crimson wave
crowd wave
darkwave
dark wave
dipole wave
eigenwave
electron wave function
electrowave
ethereal wave
Eugene wave
fifth-wave feminism
finger wave
first-wave feminism
fixed wave
four-lined wave
fourth-wave feminism
freak wave
French new wave
Gaussian wave packet
Gerstner wave
gravitational-wave
gravitational-wave background
gravitational wave background
green wave
halfwave
hand-wave
heatwave
heat wave
Hertzian wave
high frequency gravitational wave
high-frequency gravitational wave
hot wave
hybrid wave function
interwave
Kallang wave
Kondratieff wave
Kondratiev wave
Korean Wave
Korean wave
K-wave
longwave
make waves
marcel wave
matterwave
matter waves
mediumwave
microwave
midwave
minimal wave
Moreton wave
multiwave
neoclassical dark wave
new-wave
nonwave
no wave
oscillating wave test system
outwave
pabebe wave
pay-by-wave
perfect wave
permanent wave
pilot wave
pink wave
planetary wave
pooping wave
Portland ribbon wave
pulse wave
quadriwave
quarter-wave plate
red wave
ride the crest of the wave
ride the wave
Rossby wave
rosy wave
sand wave
sawtooth wave
Schrödinger's wave equation
Schrödinger wave function
sea-wave
second wave
second-wave feminism
seismic sea wave
semiwave
shear wave
shoaling wave
short-wave
shortwave
significant wave height
sneaker wave
solitary wave
soundwave
space wave
spatial wave function
spin-density wave
spin wave
square wave
stationary wave
submillimeter wave radiation
superwave
synthwave
theta wave
third-wave coffee
third-wave feminism
third wave feminist
third-wave feminist
thought wave
tidal wave
tide wave
timewave
traveling wave
traveling wave tube
traveling-wave tube
travelling wave
travelling wave tube
travelling-wave tube
triangle wave
T wave
T-wave
ultrawave
wavable
waveband
wave base
wavecut
wave dash
wave drag
wave election
wave equation
wavefield
wave field synthesis
wavefolding
wave form
waveform
wavefront
waveful
wavefunction
wave function
waveguide
wavelength
waveless
wavelet
wavelike
wave loaf
wavemaker
wavemark
wave-mechanical
wave mechanics
wavemeter
wave model
wave motion
wave node
wave number
wavenumber
waveoff
wave offering
wave of the hand
wave of translation
wave operator
wave packet
wave-particle
wave-particle duality
wave picking
wave plate
waveplate
wave pool
wave power
wave processing
waveproof
wavepulse
wave reflection
wave-rider
waverider
wave rider
wave-runner
wave runner
waverunner
wave scroll
waveshape
waveshaper
waveshaping
wave shoaling
wave ski
wavespeed
wavestacking
wavetable
wave theory
wavetop
wave train
wave turn
wave vector
waveward
wave washing
wavewise
wavicle
Wavoid
wavy
Windsor wave
zone-batch-wave picking
zone-wave picking
μwave
μ-wave