Rave

How to spell rave

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce rave

What does rave mean?

1. verbTo speak or write about something with wild, glowing enthusiasm.
2. nounA large, often all-night party with loud electronic dance music.

Rave in a sentence

• verb

  Critics rave about the new restaurant on the corner.

• noun

  The warehouse rave ran until sunrise on Saturday.

• verb

  My colleagues rave about that productivity app for weeks.

• noun

  Organisers booked three headline DJs for the outdoor rave.

Where does rave come from?

Language of origin: French

The word arrived in Middle English as raven, meaning to be delirious or to talk wildly, and it came from the Old French raver, an older form of rever, which meant to dream, to wander in the mind, or to be out of one's senses. The deeper origin is genuinely uncertain, and scholars cannot trace the French verb confidently back to a single Latin source, which is why its early history is often marked as obscure. Over the centuries the English sense softened from 'rant in delirium' toward 'speak with wild enthusiasm', so that by the modern era to rave about something simply meant to praise it lavishly. The same French ancestor lies behind the word 'reverie', a state of pleasant daydreaming, which preserves the older 'dreaming' shade of meaning. The youth-culture sense of a rave as an all-night dance party grew out of British slang in the twentieth century, where a 'rave' first meant any lively, exuberant gathering. The spelling itself is mercifully regular, with the silent final 'e' lengthening the vowel exactly as in 'cave' and 'save'.

How the word is built

• rave (single root; from Old French raver 'to be delirious, wander in mind')