carven
English
Etymology
From Middle English carven, a variant (with the vowel modified to match the present stem) of Middle English corven, y-corven (“carved”), from Old English corfen, ġecorfen (“cut, carved”), from Proto-West Germanic *korban, from Proto-Germanic *kurbanaz (“cut, carved”), past participle of *kerbaną (“to carve”). Equivalent to carve + -en (past participle ending).
Adjective
carven (not comparable)
- Made by carving, especially when intricately or artistically done.
- 1842, Alfred Tennyson, “The Day-Dream. The Sleeping Palace.”, in Poems. […], volume II, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 151:
- The beams that thro' the Oriel shine / Make prisms in every carven glass, / And beaker brimm'd with noble wine.
- 1903 April 11, F[lora] A[nnie] Steel, “The Beasts That Perish”, in The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art, volume 95, number 2,476, London, page 449, column 1:
- I can fancy myself there now, the sun and the sweetness of the orange blossom bewildering in their purity, the green parrotlings in a nest behind a carven god simmering away contentedly like half a dozen kettles until with an express train shriek a red and green parent whizzed past me bearing a dinner for one, […]
- 1999, Lin Carter, The Quest of Kadji, page 118:
- The architecture was bewildering in its multiform complexity: great, sleepy-lidded faces of stone gazed down from the eight-sided towers; fantastic dragon-hybrids writhed entangled coils above portal and arch; many-armed and beast-headed gods thronged the paven ways, lining entire avenues in rank on rank of carven stone idols so innumerable as to suggest pantheons as populous as dynasties.
Verb
carven
- (archaic) past participle of carve.
- 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:
- We both loved her now and for all time, she was stamped and carven on our hearts, and no other woman or interest could ever raze that splendid die.
Middle English
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