Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various widely distributed birds of the family Columbidae, which includes the pigeons, having a small head and a characteristic cooing call.
  • noun A gentle, innocent person.
  • noun A person who advocates peace, conciliation, or negotiation in preference to confrontation or armed conflict.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An occasional preterit of dive.
  • To slumber; be in a state between sleeping and waking.
  • noun Any bird of the family Columbidæ; a pigeon.
  • noun The word has no more specific meaning than this, being exactly synonymous with pigeon; in popular usage it is applied most frequently to a few kinds of pigeons best known to the public, and as a book-name is commonly attached to the smaller species of pigeons: as, the ring-dove, turtle-dove, stock-dove, ground-dove, quail-dove, etc. The Carolina dove, or mourning dove, is Zenaidura carolinensis. The common doves of the old world are the ring-dove, rock-dove, stock-dove, and turtle-dove. (See these words.) In poetry, and in literature generally, the dove is an emblem of innocence, gentleness, and tender affection. In sacred literature and art it is a symbol of the Holy Ghost.
  • noun Eccles., a repository or tabernacle for the eucharist, in the form of a dove, formerly used in the East and in France.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Zoöl.) A pigeon of the genus Columba and various related genera. The species are numerous.
  • noun A word of endearment for one regarded as pure and gentle.
  • noun a person advocating peace, compromise or conciliation rather than war or conflict. Opposite of hawk.
  • noun (Zoöl.) a mite (Argas reflexus) which infests doves and other birds.
  • noun [Slang] a prostitute.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A pigeon, especially one smaller in size; a bird (often arbitrarily called either a pigeon or a dove or both) of more than 300 species of the family Columbidae.
  • noun politics A person favouring conciliation and negotiation rather than conflict (as opposed to hawk).
  • noun engineering Dove, an engineering reference point in a computer program that will cause some type of default action.
  • verb Strong-declension simple past of dive.
  • verb nonstandard Past participle of dive

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun flesh of a pigeon suitable for roasting or braising; flesh of a dove (young squab) may be broiled
  • noun any of numerous small pigeons
  • noun a constellation in the southern hemisphere near Puppis and Caelum
  • noun someone who prefers negotiations to armed conflict in the conduct of foreign relations
  • noun an emblem of peace

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English douve, from Old English *dūfe.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English dove, douve, duve, from Old English *dūfe (“dove, pigeon”), from Proto-Germanic *dūbōn (“dove”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeubʰ- (“to whisk, smoke, be obscure”). Cognate with Scots doo, dow ("dove"), West Frisian do ("dove"), Dutch duif ("dove, pigeon"), Low German (Low Saxon) Duuv ("dove, pigeon"), German Taube ("dove, pigeon"), Danish due ("dove"), Swedish duva ("dove"), Icelandic dúfa ("dove"), Gothic 𐌳𐌿𐌱𐍉 (dubo).

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

A modern dialectal formation of the strong declension, by analogy with drivedrove and weavewove.

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Examples

Comments

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  • (rhymes with love) - a kind of bird

    (rhymes with cove) - past tense of dive

    March 27, 2007

  • OOooooooooooo....

    March 27, 2007

  • Italian has another pronunciation again.

    September 2, 2008

  • The Mourning Dove's call (oooo,oooo,oo) is the Morse Code equivalent of 'R': dah dah dit.

    March 4, 2014

  • Some dove humor.

    March 4, 2014