calve
Americanverb (used without object)
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to give birth to a calf.
The cow is expected to calve tomorrow.
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(of a glacier, an iceberg, etc.) to break up or splinter so as to produce a detached piece.
verb (used with object)
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to give birth to (a calf ).
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(of a glacier, an iceberg, etc.) to break off or detach (a piece).
The glacier calved an iceberg.
verb
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to give birth to (a calf)
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(of a glacier or iceberg) to release (masses of ice) in breaking up
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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calvesimple
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calvessimple
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have calvedperfect
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has calvedperfect
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am calvingprogressive
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are calvingprogressive
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is calvingprogressive
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have been calvingperfect progressive
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has been calvingperfect progressive
Past
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calvedsimple
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had calvedperfect
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was calvingprogressive
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were calvingprogressive
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had been calvingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of calve
before 1000; Middle English calven, Old English (Anglian) *calfian, derivative of calf calf 1; cognate with Old English ( West Saxon ) cealfian
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:
The whales feast all summer long, and only then embark on a 6,000-mile journey south to Mexico, where females calve and nurse their young in the warm and protected inlets along the Baja Peninsula.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 14, 2024
"This rifting process is essentially how Antarctic ice shelves calve large icebergs."
From Science Daily ● Feb. 28, 2024
These icebergs, some of them skyscraper-size, calve regularly from the glacier front, crash into a deep fiord and float west into Disko Bay.
From New York Times ● Jan. 6, 2024
These whales breed and calve along the Pacific coast of Mexico and feed from California to Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 4, 2023
As the icebergs calve from the glaciers on the continent, they bring with them mineral deposits scraped up from the ground, and release these nutrients into the water.
From "Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World" by Jennifer Armstrong
“It couldn’t come at a worse time, as a lot of producers will be selling their calves over the next few months.”
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 28, 2026
And pulsing is no joke — one exercise left my calves shaking.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2026
"Orcas often tear apart prey and share it with other members of the group, including calves and juveniles," said Ayres.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 23, 2026
"Orcas often tear apart prey and share it with other members of the group, including calves and juveniles."
From Barron's ● Jul. 23, 2026
He wore a bulky robe of brown reindeer hide that hung all the way to his calves, and a broad belt of red buckskin.
From "Wolf Brother" by Michelle Paver
The size and makeup of the particles also revealed that the main source of iron was not dust, but icebergs calved from West Antarctica.
From Science Daily ● Feb. 4, 2026
What followed was further loss of floating ice from the front of Hektoria, as large, flat-topped icebergs broke off or "calved", and the ice behind sped up and thinned.
From BBC ● Nov. 3, 2025
The study — and eventual closure of Explorers — came after a huge chunk of ice fell off, or calved, the main glacier on Oct.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 7, 2023
I grew up reading Scott's journals, I traced routes from Palmer Station to Queen Maude Land on a map, and I stared for hours at photographs of calved glaciers in the Minnesota Science Museum.
From Salon ● May 29, 2023
‘I don’t know. They said I could summon them when the time comes. Maybe Artemis and Apollo can explain -’ A section of the wall calved like a glacier.
From "Blood of Olympus" by Rick Riordan
The leading causes of cattle death are respiratory illness, digestive problems, calving complications and weather—not wolves.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 15, 2026
The Mexican cowboys became adept at everything from calving to branding to overseeing the kind of long-distance cattle drives that later became a staple of the western.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 23, 2026
"She had an easy calving, the vet said the calves were easy to get out, it was just the stress of carrying so many calves."
From BBC ● Jan. 9, 2026
Don’t forget Canada’s zombie wildfires, the Texas floods, the late autumn Southwest heat waves, the calving Doomsday glacier and on and on.
From Salon ● Dec. 31, 2025
She laughed as loudly as a calving glacier.
From "Norse Mythology" by Neil Gaiman
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.
