shave
Americanverb (used without object)
-
shaves,
present (3rd person singular)
-
shaved,
past participle, past
-
shaven,
past participle
-
shaving
present participle
verb (used with object)
-
shaves,
present (3rd person singular)
-
shaved,
past participle, past
-
shaven,
past participle
-
shaving
present participle
-
to remove hair from (the face, legs, etc.) by cutting it off close to the skin with a razor.
-
to cut off (hair, especially the beard) close to the skin with a razor (often followed by off oraway ).
-
to cut or scrape away the surface of with a sharp-edged tool.
to shave hides in preparing leather.
-
to reduce to shavings or thin slices.
to shave wood.
-
to cut or trim closely.
to shave a lawn.
-
to scrape, graze, or come very near to.
The car just shaved the garage door.
-
Commerce. to purchase (a note) at a rate of discount greater than is legal or customary.
-
to reduce or deduct from.
The store shaved the price of winter suits in the spring.
noun
-
shaves
plural
-
the act, process, or an instance of shaving or being shaved.
-
a thin slice; a shaving.
-
any of various tools for shaving, scraping, removing thin slices, etc.
verb
-
(also intr) to remove (the beard, hair, etc) from (the face, head, or body) by scraping the skin with a razor
-
to cut or trim very closely
-
to reduce to shavings
-
to remove thin slices from (wood, etc) with a sharp cutting tool; plane or pare
-
to touch or graze in passing
-
informal to reduce (a price) by a slight amount
-
commerce to purchase (a commercial paper) at a greater rate of discount than is customary or legal
noun
-
the act or an instance of shaving
-
any tool for scraping
-
a thin slice or shaving
-
an instance of barely touching something
-
informal a narrow escape
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
-
reshaveverb
-
shavableadjective
-
shaveableadjective
-
unshavableadjective
-
unshaveableadjective
-
unshavedadjective
-
well-shavedadjective
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
shavesimple
-
shavessimple
-
have shavedperfect
-
have shavenperfect
-
has shavedperfect
-
has shavenperfect
-
am shavingprogressive
-
are shavingprogressive
-
is shavingprogressive
-
have been shavingperfect progressive
-
has been shavingperfect progressive
Past
-
shavedsimple
-
had shavedperfect
-
had shavenperfect
-
was shavingprogressive
-
were shavingprogressive
-
had been shavingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of shave
before 900; (v.) Middle English schaven, schafen, Old English sc ( e ) afan; cognate with Dutch schaven to plane (a plank), abrade (the skin), Low German schaven, German schaben, Old Norse skafa to scrape, Gothic skaban to shear, shave; (noun) Middle English schave tool for shaving, Old English sc ( e ) afa, derivative of the v.
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:
One of the goals of the merger is to shave costs by consolidating overlapping business divisions and back-office functions.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 13, 2026
Federal Health officials are working to shave six months to a year off the time it takes companies to do early-stage studies of experimental drugs.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 23, 2026
If we take the 30-year loan and make one extra payment a year, and apply that to the principal, we will shave eight years off the life of the loan.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 23, 2026
Faced with the prospect of losing it through chemotherapy, she asked her brother to shave it off for her.
From BBC ● Jun. 3, 2026
Biff went into the bathroom, and after he had bathed his face he decided that he would have time for a shave.
From "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers
A sermon used to take him 10 to 15 hours to prepare; a chatbot doing first-pass research and phrasing shaves off several of them.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 19, 2026
In the capital Kabul, a 25-year-old barber lamented that "there are a lot of restrictions" which go against his young clients' preference for closer shaves.
From Barron's ● Feb. 19, 2026
He retreats to his predecessor Jerry Brown’s rural ranch in Northern California, shaves his head and announces he’s taking a vow of silence until the first leg of California’s high-speed rail project is finished.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 31, 2025
Unless polling shows that he shaves a point or so off of their own races, in which case they’ll wave him off.
From Slate ● Aug. 3, 2024
The akrafena gets to the end of the thicket, turns, and shaves down one side of the wall.
From "Kwame Crashes the Underworld" by Craig Kofi Farmer
A platter of summer tomatoes, tuna-belly conserva, shaved onion, and punchy olives arrives where it cannot possibly fit.
From Salon ● Aug. 11, 2026
With his head shaved and wearing a yellow prison jumpsuit, Farinacci appeared in court where his bail was raised from $1 million to $2 million.
From Barron's ● Aug. 7, 2026
The mediocre headline increase comes with a big caveat: A bigger U.S. trade deficit and smaller inventory replenishment shaved 1.7 percentage points off the economy’s growth rate.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 30, 2026
“Beard’s” blurry cover photo, which shows her shaved head and slightly doleful eyes, “captures exactly what I was trying to portray with the music,” she adds.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2026
The service man put his tool bag down on the kitchen floor, looked at the refrigerator, and then at Mr. Popper, who, to tell the truth, had not shaved yet and was not very tidy.
From "Mr. Popper's Penguins" by Florence Atwater and Richard Atwater
Who knows where the trend began, but I remain clean shaven.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 3, 2026
The Sheriff’s Department is looking for the suspect, who was described as a Black male, 6 feet, 2 inches tall, 180 pounds and with a shaven head.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 4, 2025
Mr. Bankman-Fried, 32, was in the courtroom, clean shaven and wearing a loose fitting brown jail uniform.
From New York Times ● Mar. 28, 2024
He looked gaunt, his head shaven and his prison uniform loose.
From BBC ● Feb. 16, 2024
He felt a dribble of sweat slide down the crown of his shaven head.
From "Artemis Fowl" by Eoin Colfer
“Cancer has a way of taking things you never realized you’d grieve,” she wrote alongside a video of the parents shaving Whimsy’s head.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 18, 2026
The objects, which sold for a total of £59,761, vary from a Victorian travelling shaving brush by pioneering silversmith Frances Douglas to an Imperial Russian tankard and an Edwardian jewellery box.
From BBC ● Jul. 4, 2026
James, the Bald Café founder, is also a life and fitness coach, and he noted that shaving the head can spark further transformation: Some men who have done it then get in better shape.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 24, 2026
Kluska believes uniQure has a clear shot at launching the drug by late 2027, shaving years off Cantor’s original 2030 timeline.
From Barron's ● Jun. 17, 2026
Chas was in the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, shaving.
From "Winger" by Andrew Smith
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.
