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:
When her hair began falling out during chemotherapy she decided to shave her head, but wanted to make it as positive an experience as possible for her children.
From BBC ● Sep. 7, 2026
Drought and record heatwaves across France this summer will shave 0.1 percent off the country's economic growth this year, adding to the heavy human toll, the finance ministry said Wednesday.
From Barron's ● Sep. 2, 2026
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
All in all, changes will likely shave about two-tenths of a percentage point off the rate.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 6, 2026
“Fine, then we’ll shave it off. Jones has a razor in his car, don’t you, Jones?”
From "Made You Up" by Francesca Zappia
Still, the third-fastest time in history shaves another tenth of a second off the 22-year-old's personal best and only increases the sense that she will break the record sooner rather than later.
From BBC ● Aug. 27, 2026
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
The tram offers hikers who don’t feel like taking the strenuous Cactus to Clouds route: From the tram’s Mountain Station, you can hike 10 miles out and back, which shaves off about 10 arduous miles.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 11, 2025
As I collect fist-sized, dry tree branches, Chou bends and shaves the leaves with her ax.
From "First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers" by Loung Ung
Rhiannon was brought to tears recalling the look on her parents' faces when they first saw her after her head had been shaved.
From BBC ● Sep. 7, 2026
That shaved 243,000 jobs off of employment from April through December 2025, UBS economists calculate, a period covered by Friday’s revisions.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026
For me, that has meant chicken with scallions and frozen ginger cubes; shaved corn with poblano and onion; butternut squash with thyme and shallots; grated tomato with basil and garlic.
From Salon ● Aug. 25, 2026
A 5.5% decrease over two years would be shaved to 4.1%.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 11, 2026
“Ah!” snapped the man, passing a hand over his shaved head.
From "Flying Through Water" by Mamle Wolo
He happily sports a shaven head – and has no intention of following his dental treatment with a radical rug rethink.
From BBC ● Sep. 8, 2026
Who knows where the trend began, but I remain clean shaven.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 3, 2026
And then there are the images of the migrants deported to a notorious El Salvador prison, shackled one behind the other in prison garb, their heads bowed and shaven.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 18, 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
If you were clean shaven and fit the dress, you played Lady Reythiel in The Swineherd and the Nightingale.
From "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss
Schick revolutionized shaving with injector razors and multiblades in a single cartridge, slugging it out in the marketplace for decades with rival shaving giant Gillette.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 16, 2026
“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
That’s not the case for James Stolis, a chemical engineer in Las Vegas, who declared independence from his follicles last July 4 by shaving his head on a mountaintop in California.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 24, 2026
I handed him things, and I sharpened his pencils, which he kept in a shaving mug.
From "The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate" by Jacqueline Kelly
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.
