rive
Americanverb (used with object)
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to tear or rend apart.
to rive meat from a bone.
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to separate by striking; split; cleave.
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to rend, harrow, or distress (the feelings, heart, etc.).
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to split (wood) radially from a log.
verb (used without object)
verb
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to split asunder
a tree riven by lightning
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to tear apart
riven to shreds
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archaic to break (the heart) or (of the heart) to be broken
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of rive
1225–75; Middle English riven < Old Norse rīfa to tear, split. See rift
Vocabulary lists containing rive
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:
Though she did not hang out with the bohemians and intellectuals of the rive gauche, there was nevertheless something about her persona that chimed with the romantic existentialism of the time.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 29, 2018
You never put your foot in the same rive twice.
From New York Times ● Nov. 28, 2017
“Per le spiagge, per le rive di Trieste,” he began, singing the opening lines of “The Bells of Saint Giusto,” a patriotic World War I paean to Italy’s victory against—and Trieste’s independence from—Austria-Hungary.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 3, 2015
His Roxbury studio resembled a tinker's shop more than some rive gauche atelier; wire and pliers and corrugated cartons filled with the flotsam of a lifetime lay about in splendid I-know-just-where-it-is disarray.
From Time Magazine Archive
Rift, rift, n. an opening split in anything: a fissure: a veil: a fording-place.—v.t. to rive: to cleave.—v.i. to split: to burst open.
From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 3 of 4: N-R) by Various
He was rived by bitterness and profound envy toward the rich.
From New York Times ● Dec. 30, 2020
Now she is rived with guilt, the initial headiness of the relationship ceding to the realization that her lover is, basically, a controlling jerk.
From New York Times ● Jul. 24, 2020
The red, dusty landscape that surrounds his house and studio is rived by a dry creek bed.
From New York Times ● Oct. 15, 2018
The battle that Gil cannot leave behind is the war that rived his nation.
From Washington Post ● May 11, 2018
Lightnings, which before only played across the horizon, as the red light of autumn evenings streaks the northern sky, now rent asunder the flinty rock, and rived the knotty oak.
From Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 by James Athearn Jones
One of those strengths is a mental fortitude that comes with representing a country that is riven by crisis and humanitarian disaster.
From BBC ● Jun. 13, 2026
“I actually have some thoughts,” she said when asked by a reporter how she felt about representing the U.S. at a time when the country is riven by deep political divides.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 8, 2026
The Southeast Asian nation of some 50 million is riven by civil war and there will be no voting in rebel-held areas.
From Barron's ● Dec. 27, 2025
Spending cuts are even more difficult than in Britain—where welfare cuts have proved to be a political nonstarter—and securing a budget at all in a deeply riven French Parliament is a challenge.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 30, 2025
It began to drizzle, as if all that flying metal had riven holes in the clouds.
From "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" by Ransom Riggs
However, the game turned on its head in dramatic fashion when Charteris was sent to the sin-bin for stopping a riving maul illegally.
From BBC ● Jun. 21, 2014
Also in the interior were 100 Russian trucks, and Soviet "technicians" were ar riving almost daily from the north.
From Time Magazine Archive
An unsuccessful mail plane was Martin's only non-military venture lately until this year when Pan American Airways submitted specifications for a huge riving boat of long cruising range for oceanic service.
From Time Magazine Archive
Craig DuMez Brookfield, Wis. As an American riving in Brazil, I felt great pride as I listened to Mondale's concession speech.
From Time Magazine Archive
Starting in fall 1793, British troops began ar- riving in Saint Domingue to reenslave people and return them to their sugar plantations.
From "Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science" by Marc Aronson
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.
