calve
Americanverb (used without object)
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calves,
present (3rd person singular)
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calved,
past participle, past
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calving
present participle
-
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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calves,
present (3rd person singular)
-
calved,
past participle, past
-
calving
present participle
-
to give birth to (a calf ).
-
(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
-
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
As they seep and calve into the sea, melting glaciers and ice sheets are raising global water levels at unprecedented rates.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 3, 2024
Either a catastrophic amount of ice could calve off the main body of ice, or hundreds of small lagoons will cause the front of the glacier to “disintegrate.”
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 7, 2023
Over 35,000 cubic metres of ice calve from the glacier each year, and more icebergs spew into Disko Bay than anywhere else in the northern hemisphere.
From BBC ● Oct. 12, 2022
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
In the 1870s, a Pend d’Oreille Indian named Walking Coyote captured a few bison calves from northern Montana.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 2, 2026
The observation adds to the small number of documented cases involving deceased calves in baleen whales.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 22, 2026
For all the sore glutes and calves, what lingers most is the appeal of turning this into a weekend ritual.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 3, 2026
Killer whales have previously been observed carrying deceased calves, including a case where a female Southern Resident killer whale carried her dead calf for at least 17 days.
From BBC ● Aug. 25, 2026
We played until my calves burned and my lungs were in danger of experiencing a non-passive failure.
From "Darius the Great Is Not Okay" by Adib Khorram
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
Climate change is unlikely to have been behind the birth of A23a because it calved so long ago, before much of the impacts of rising temperatures that we are now seeing.
From BBC ● Jan. 22, 2025
“We’ve had some pretty major erosion at archaeological sites of serious concern — we go out after storm events and sometimes see multiple feet of erosion, big chunks that have calved off at once.”
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 28, 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
When they were about fifty yards from the base, a thunderclap rattled Hazels bones, and a curtain of ice that would have covered Camp Jupiter calved away and fell toward them.
From "The Son of Neptune" by Rick Riordan
Their crews are at risk if the ships are damaged, and the vessels could capsize if they are in the vicinity of giant ice chunks breaking off glaciers, a process called calving.
From Barron's ● Aug. 26, 2026
Environment and Climate Change Canada is monitoring the ice island's movement, as it has done following previous Arctic ice shelf calving events, while evaluating potential risks to vessels and offshore infrastructure.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 26, 2026
On August 4, 2026, the glacier released a 76.4 km2 ice island, its largest loss of floating ice since 2012 and the biggest Arctic calving event since 2020.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 26, 2026
Those measurements gave researchers a detailed view of changes that had been developing months before the eventual calving event.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 25, 2026
It was like seeing glaciers calving, or moths bursting out of their cocoons.
From "The School for Whatnots" by Margaret Peterson Haddix
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.
