Wave

How to spell wave

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce wave

What does wave mean?

1. nounA moving ridge or swell on the surface of water, or a similar travelling disturbance of energy.
2. verbTo move the hand or an object back and forth as a greeting or signal.

Wave in a sentence

• noun

  A large wave knocked the surfer off his board.

• verb

  She will wave to her parents from the train window.

• noun

  The physics lesson explained how each sound wave travels through the air.

• verb

  The marshal began to wave a flag to start the race.

Where does wave come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Wave comes from the Old English verb wafian, which meant to move the hands to and fro, and is closely related to wafre, meaning unsteady or wavering. These Germanic roots all carried the sense of something swaying or moving back and forth in an uncertain way. Over time the verb spread to describe the rolling motion of water, and by the 1500s the noun sense of a moving ridge of water on the sea had become firmly established. The same family gave us waver, meaning to hesitate or sway, which still shows the original idea of unsteady movement. Wave is often confused in writing with its homophone waive, meaning to give up a right, which arrived separately from Anglo-Norman French, so the spelling trap is choosing between the everyday w-a-v-e and the legal-sounding w-a-i-v-e.

How the word is built

• wave (from Old English wafian: to move the hands back and forth)

Words that sound like wave

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• waive: To voluntarily give up or refrain from enforcing a right, claim, fee, or rule.