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''clove'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260901232210-00-⌔

clove - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

clove (countable and uncountable, plural cloves)

  • (uncountable or countable) A very pungent aromatic spice, the unexpanded flower bud of the clove tree.
  • (countable) A clove tree, of the species Syzygium aromaticum (syn. Caryophyllus aromaticus), native to the Moluccas (Indonesian islands), which produces the spice.
  • (countable) An old English measure of weight, containing 7 pounds (3.2 kg), i.e. half a stone.
    • ✤ Seven pounds make a clove, 2 cloves a stone, 2 stone a tod, 6 + ⁄ tods a wey, 2 weys a sack, 12 sacks a last. The ‘Pathway’ points out the etymology of the word cloves; it calls them ‘claves or nails.’ It is to be observed here that a sack is 13 tods, and a tod 28 pounds, so that the sack is 364 pounds.1
    • ✤ By a statute of 9 Hen. VI. it was ordained that the wey of cheese should contain 32 cloves of 7 lbs. each, i.e. 224 lbs., or 2 cwts.2

Noun

clove (plural cloves)

  • (horticulture, cooking) One of the small bulbs that make up the large, compound bulb in garlic, shallots, or similar plants.
    • ✤ clove of garlic, garlic clove, clove of a sea-onion, clove of shallot, cloves of bulbs
  • (now rare) A segment or natural division of a fruit.
    • ✤ [W]e hurried by […] past the meatfaced woman, a butcher’s dame, nuzzling thirstily her clove of orange.3

Verb

clove

  • simple past of cleave

Noun

clove (plural cloves)

  • (Northeastern US, geography) A narrow valley with steep sides.

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /kləʊv/
  • (General American) IPA: /kloʊv/
  • Audio (US): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -əʊv

Etymology 1

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From Middle English clove, an alteration of earlier clowe, borrowed from the first component of Old French clou (de girofle) (modern French clou de girofle), from Latin clāvus (“nail”) for its shape. Also see clāva (“knotty branch, club”). Doublet of clou and clavus.

Etymology 2

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From Middle English clove, from Old English clufu, from Proto-West Germanic ﹡klubu, from Proto-Germanic ﹡klubō, related to clēofan (“to cleave, split”), hence with the verbal etymology hereafter.

Etymology 3

Etymology 4

Borrowed from Dutch klove (now kloof).4 Doublet of kloof.

Printed 2026-09-01.

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Footnotes

  1. 1843, The Penny Cyclopaedia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, volume 27, page 202: ↩

  2. 1866, James Edwin Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England, volume 1, page 169: ↩

  3. 1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 2: Nestor]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC, part I[Telemachia], page 32: ↩

  4. “clove, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000. ↩