hive
Americannoun
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hives
plural
verb (used with object)
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hives,
present (3rd person singular)
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hived,
past participle, past
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hiving
present participle
-
to gather into or cause to enter a hive.
-
to shelter as in a hive.
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to store up in a hive.
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to store or lay away for future use or enjoyment.
verb (used without object)
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hives,
present (3rd person singular)
-
hived,
past participle, past
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hiving
present participle
-
(of bees) to enter a hive.
-
to live together in or as in a hive.
verb phrase
noun
-
a structure in which social bees live and rear their young
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a colony of social bees
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a place showing signs of great industry (esp in the phrase a hive of activity )
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a teeming crowd; multitude
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an object in the form of a hive
verb
-
to cause (bees) to collect or (of bees) to collect inside a hive
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to live or cause to live in or as if in a hive
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(tr) (of bees) to store (honey, pollen, etc) in the hive
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(tr; often foll by up or away) to store, esp for future use
he used to hive away a small sum every week
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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hivesimple
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hivessimple
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have hivedperfect
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has hivedperfect
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am hivingprogressive
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are hivingprogressive
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is hivingprogressive
-
have been hivingperfect progressive
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has been hivingperfect progressive
Past
-
hivedsimple
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had hivedperfect
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was hivingprogressive
-
were hivingprogressive
-
had been hivingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of hive
First recorded before 900; Middle English; Old English hȳf; akin to Old Norse hūfr “ship's hull,” Latin cūpa “vat”
Explanation
A hive can be a home for bees. It’s also a whole bunch of something moving around — like a hive of eager students — which is related to the fact that so many bees live in a hive. The word hive is most recognizable as a place where bees live, but it can be a verb that means to move together as one, like a swarm of bees. It can also describe storing a lot of things in a confined space, the way bees are packed into a hive. You might hive your stamp collection in boxes in the attic, but if bees have built a hive in the eaves you won't be able to get to them.
Vocabulary lists containing hive
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Social insects including bees rely on cooling behavior for example fanning their wings when things get too hot to buffer the hive but there are limits as to how effective this is in extreme heat.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 29, 2026
Meanwhile, Cadiz is taking steps to hive off the infrastructure it has planned to use for its water project, mostly two unused pipelines, into a special purpose subsidiary.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 14, 2026
In the debut season, she’s one of the few remaining humans on Earth who is not part of a particularly cheery hive mind brought on by an alien virus.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 8, 2026
"It will be a buzzing hive of royal activity in every other way".
From BBC ● Jun. 25, 2026
You might remember it looking alive as a hive late in summer.
From "The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle" by Leslie Connor
Al-Dabba himself lost some 400 hives, which he had kept in agricultural lands east of Gaza City.
From Barron's ● Aug. 7, 2026
The most common symptoms are hives and gastrointestinal issues, but symptoms can progress to shortness of breath and even anaphylactic shock.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 25, 2026
In all, Teller lost 80 established hives as well as 16 hives with bees he has rescued as part of his bee removal business.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 29, 2026
If people exterminate hives, native pollinators such as monarch butterflies, bumblebees, wasps and more can also be affected by the insecticides used.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 29, 2026
I hadn’t been out to the hives before, so to start off she gave me a lesson in what she called “bee yard etiquette.”
From "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd
He hived off the employee from the investigation, but the discovery underlined the stakes.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 20, 2022
BP owns a large stake in Russian energy giant Rosneft, but within days of the war starting it had announced the operation would be hived off.
From BBC ● May 12, 2022
These were done using routine commercially available lab equipment, or were hived off to other facilities.
From Nature ● May 13, 2018
His explanation to Bloomberg was that the White House was the closest available location to access a classified computer network hived off from Congress.
From The Guardian ● Mar. 27, 2017
“I used the funnel to drop them in a swarm box,” she said, “then I hived them again.”
From "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd
As CEO, he has undertaken a significant restructuring of the business—including hiving off its life and retirement business—and overseen a marked increase in profitability.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 14, 2025
Dr Jash says he also told her that they may even have to perform an invasive surgery which would involve hiving off a part of her lung.
From BBC ● Apr. 26, 2024
Men spilled over each other, hiving off into small groups to drink.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 11, 2024
Failing to do so could risk Musk hiving off the A.I. work that had driven investor enthusiasm in the stock.
From New York Times ● Jan. 25, 2024
Experience has taught that it is best to remove the new swarm to the place where it is intended to stand during the season, immediately after hiving.
From A Manual or an Easy Method of Managing Bees by John M. (John Moseley) Weeks
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
