Dives

How to spell dives

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce dives

What does dives mean?

1. verbThird-person singular present of dive: plunges headfirst, or drops steeply downward.
2. nounPlural of dive: headfirst plunges into water, or steep downward movements.
3. nounPlural of dive: cheap, run-down bars or drinking establishments.

Dives in a sentence

• verb

  Every morning she dives into the cold pool before work.

• noun

  The judges scored both of her dives from the high board.

• noun

  The band spent years playing in smoky dives before signing a deal.

• verb

  The share price dives whenever the company misses its forecast.

• noun

  A series of sudden price dives rattled the investors.

• noun

  That part of town is full of cheap dives and pawn shops.

Where does dives come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the inflected form of 'dive', a thoroughly native English word that traces back to Old English, where two related verbs sat side by side: dufan, meaning 'to sink or duck under', and dyfan, meaning 'to immerse or dip'. Both came from a common Germanic root tied to the idea of going down into water, and relatives survive across the Germanic family, including the Dutch duiken and the German tauchen, both meaning 'to dive'. Over the centuries the two Old English verbs blended into the single modern 'dive', which kept the old sense of plunging headfirst and later picked up figurative uses, such as prices that dive or a swimmer who dives in. The slang noun sense, a cheap and disreputable drinking place, is a much later American coinage from the 1800s, probably because such places were often found down below street level, so customers literally dived into them. The plain spelling rarely troubles adults; the only mild trap is remembering it is simply dive plus -s, with no doubling or silent letters.

How the word is built

• dive (from Old English dufan/dyfan: to plunge, sink)
• -s (plural noun / third-person singular verb ending)