stave
Americannoun
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one of the thin, narrow, shaped pieces of wood that form the sides of a cask, tub, or similar vessel.
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a stick, rod, pole, or the like.
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a rung of a ladder, chair, etc.
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Prosody.
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a verse or stanza of a poem or song.
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the alliterating sound in a line of verse, as the w- sound in wind in the willows.
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Music. staff.
verb (used with object)
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to break in a stave or staves of (a cask or barrel) so as to release the wine, liquor, or other contents.
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to release (wine, liquor, etc.) by breaking the cask or barrel.
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to break or crush (something) inward (often followed byin ).
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to break (a hole) in, especially in the hull of a boat.
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to break to pieces; splinter; smash.
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to furnish with a stave or staves.
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to beat with a stave or staff.
verb (used without object)
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to become staved in, as a boat; break in or up.
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to move along rapidly.
verb phrase
noun
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any one of a number of long strips of wood joined together to form a barrel, bucket, boat hull, etc
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any of various bars, slats, or rods, usually of wood, such as a rung of a ladder or a crosspiece bracing the legs of a chair
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any stick, staff, etc
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a stanza or verse of a poem
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music
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an individual group of five lines and four spaces used in staff notation
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another word for staff 1
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verb
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(often foll by in) to break or crush (the staves of a boat, barrel, etc) or (of the staves of a boat) to be broken or crushed
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to burst or force (a hole in something)
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(tr) to provide (a ladder, chair, etc) with a stave or staves
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(tr) to sprain (a finger, toe, etc)
Synonym Usage
See verse.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of stave
First recorded in 1125–75; (noun) Middle English, back formation from staves; (verb) derivative of the noun
Explanation
A stave is the crosspiece between the legs of a chair or a wooden slat forming the side of a barrel. In music, it's the five lines you write notes on. Stave comes from the word staff, as in a walking stick. You're most likely to encounter the word stave if you're learning woodworking. If someone "staves in" a door, they've broken a hole in it. You also might hear the idiom "stave off," which means to hold off for a short time.
Vocabulary lists containing stave
This Week In Words: August 17–23, 2019
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Music - Middle School
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"The Tragedy of Macbeth," Vocabulary from Act 5
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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:
That didn’t stave off a first round of tariffs.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026
That water, equivalent to the annual use of about 600,000 typical households, is expected to add about 3 feet to Lake Mead’s level, enough to temporarily stave off critically low levels for a few months.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 21, 2026
In New Orleans, sandbags are being distributed to stave off flood waters.
From BBC ● Jul. 21, 2026
Inside the secretive lab shaping America’s retail landscape: At a Florida lab few have ever seen, a team of researchers is trying to stave off a purported epidemic of shoplifting.
From Slate ● Jul. 13, 2026
Bono had, through his exertions—the boat being well nigh intractable, now swamped—snapped off the rowlock and a stave of the gunwale, wet with rot.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson
For many Americans taking a weight-loss drug, Thanksgiving presents a conundrum: Take the weekly dose that staves off hunger, or push it off so they can feast?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 26, 2025
"In our model, the barrel staves spread out in steps," he says, "each step representing a new limiting factor that becomes active as the cell grows faster."
From Science Daily ● Nov. 11, 2025
France's Emmanuel Macron was on Friday due to pick a head of government tasked with pulling the country out of a political gridlock, in a move that staves off fresh elections for now.
From Barron's ● Oct. 10, 2025
It means not all the cuts will go ahead and it staves off effective bankruptcy, but it also saddles Havering with high debt repayments for the next 20 years.
From BBC ● Mar. 18, 2024
Kane and his men traded needles, barrel staves, and buttons for four sled dogs and fresh walrus meat.
From "American Spirits" by Barb Rosenstock
Jamie Smith and Gus Atkinson at least staved off humiliation with a battling stand of 75, ended when Atkinson was out just before lunch.
From BBC ● Jun. 29, 2026
Powell’s calm but forceful defense of Fed independence likely staved off larger attacks on the institution and won him admiration and awards, like the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage award.
From MarketWatch ● May 10, 2026
They wouldn’t get any closer, on account of USC’s star freshman, who personally staved off any serious threat of a Badger comeback.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 19, 2026
Nevertheless, Bush’s protest at least temporarily staved off hundreds of thousands of Americans from being removed from their homes.
From Slate ● Oct. 23, 2025
“Here’s the plan. We’re going to get out of this room. Then we’ll look at those bandages, and after we make sure you’ve staved off the vampires, we’ll get out of Dodge. Deal?”
From "Time Bomb" by Joelle Charbonneau
The company has also reportedly been in discussions about potential concessions in the hope of satisfying Bonta’s concerns and staving off a lawsuit.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 11, 2026
And a sense that this moral fable is playing out in other groups among the 600 or so mountain gorillas who are staving off extinction in their Virunga Mountains enclave.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 17, 2026
A $7 billion IMF bailout helped unlock further loans from friendly nations, staving off collapse.
From Barron's ● Nov. 20, 2025
"The ABC and others cannot be allowed to regard a penalty as an acceptable price to pay for staving off criticism."
From BBC ● Sep. 23, 2025
It was like I’d been staving it all off for survival’s sake, and now that things looked better, I allowed myself to be sick.
From "Endangered" by Eliot Schrefer
In the early 1970s, Stephen Hawking and other researchers discovered surprising connections between the laws of thermodynamics, which describe familiar processes such as heating water on a stove, and the behavior of black holes.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 13, 2026
The “Charlie’s Angels” star proceeded to pose next to the petite kitchen, which comes complete with a stove and sink.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 8, 2026
On the hottest days, his mother Madhuri Devi said she repeatedly vomited while cooking over the stove.
From Barron's ● Jun. 26, 2026
It’s increasingly possible, she says, for induction elements to be combined with other kinds of surfaces—meaning a countertop that doubles as a stove.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026
“Who remembers the cold comfort of that open hearth before we built a new school with its patented front-loader chunk stove with isinglass winders?”
From "The Teacher’s Funeral" by Richard Peck
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.
