Cove

How to spell cove

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce cove

What does cove mean?

1. nounA small, sheltered inlet or recess in a coastline, usually with a curved shore.

Cove in a sentence

• The fishing boats anchored in a quiet cove to wait out the storm.

• We swam in the calm water of a hidden cove below the cliffs.

Where does cove come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from the Old English cofa, which meant an inner chamber, a small den, or a sheltered recess. That noun came from a wider Germanic family of words for a hollow or enclosed space; its relatives include the Old Norse kofi, meaning a hut or shed. For centuries the English word kept the sense of a small recess or nook, including a recess in a hillside, and only later was it applied to a small, sheltered inlet of the sea, the meaning most people know today. The same idea of a curved, scooped-out hollow survives in the architectural use of cove for a concave moulding where a wall curves into a ceiling. Because the word is so short and follows the regular silent-e pattern, the only real spelling question for an adult is remembering it ends in a plain -ve rather than anything more elaborate.

How the word is built

• cove (from Old English cofa: chamber, recess), a single unanalysable root with no prefix or suffix