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.
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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
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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
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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:
A third hive was added last year, with five members of staff now trained to look after them.
From BBC ● Oct. 4, 2026
The market and adjacent bridge hit in Monday's bombardment had become a hive of trading activity since civil war broke out in Myanmar following a 2021 military coup.
From Barron's ● Sep. 29, 2026
The densely populated island of Manhattan, with its focus on trade and commerce, was a hive of activity at the turn of the 19th century.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 13, 2026
To study the process, researchers built so-called "nanocolonies," small experimental systems designed to reproduce key functions inside a hive.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 22, 2026
“No need for it here. Not yet. Bumblebees! A whole hive of them in my ears!”
From "The Black Cauldron" by Lloyd Alexander
During summer peaks the hives become home to about 180,000 of the striped insects.
From BBC ● Oct. 4, 2026
The “last grizzly killed” has several claimants: In Orange County, it was in February 1908, when a huge steel trap was laid for a bear that had been stealing honeycombs from hives.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 13, 2026
Al-Dabba and his sons, donning protective netted hats and wielding metal bee smokers, gently inspect the neat rows of teeming hives.
From Barron's ● Aug. 7, 2026
Honeybees typically nest above ground in hollow trees or managed hives, and their colonies usually contain between 30,000 and 60,000 bees.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 7, 2026
Then she broke out in hives —red welts covering her face, neck, and body, even the soles of her feet.
From "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot
Meanwhile the French Mandate hived off Lebanon from Syria to create a strategic beachhead and imposed new boundaries over the whole territory in the early 1920s, before an Arab rebellion which they also ruthlessly suppressed.
From BBC ● Oct. 2, 2023
He hived off the employee from the investigation, but the discovery underlined the stakes.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 20, 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
As evening moved into night, they ate through me and hived up inside my brainpan with a loud buzz, their wings beating me into submission.
From "Chains" by Laurie Halse Anderson
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
At that time, Tata Steel had only planned to combine its Dutch assets with ThyssenKrupp’s steel assetsin Germany while hiving off its ailing U.K. business to other parties.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 11, 2016
The importance of these remarks will be more obvious, when I come to discuss the proper mode of hiving bees.
From Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee A Bee Keeper's Manual by L. L. (Lorenzo Lorraine) Langstroth
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.
