''eave'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260813235252-00-⌔

eave - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

eave (plural eaves)

• (architecture) Alternative form of eaves (“the underside of a roof that extends beyond the external walls of a building”) [from mid 18th c.]
  • ✤ Features such as shutters, eave brackets, transoms, a wraparound porch, and a pergola all help establish the style of this home.¹
  • ✤ Among other work done, according to the letter: CPR replaced the bottom of a deteriorating stair column base with hollow steel structural sections; conducted exploratory demolition on the underside of an eave that required “removal and reconstruction”; and removed all loose “cracked, spalled, deteriorated, and delaminated concrete” and damaged stucco from the underside of balcony eaves on 114 of the building’s 136 units, the letter said.²

Etymology

A back-formation from eaves, from a misinterpretation of the -s ending as forming a plural.³⁴

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /iːv/
• (General American) IPA: /iv/
• Homophones: eve, Eve
• Rhymes: -iːv

Printed 2026-08-13.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 2006 February, Jill Kirchner Simpson, “Building a Modular Home”, in Country Living, volume 29, number 2, page 51: ↩

2. 2021 July 2, Eliott C. McLaughlin, Alta Spells, Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman, “Firm held off on repairs because of stability issues in months before Surfside building collapse”, in CNN ‎${}^{[1]}$, archived from the original on 22 November 2021: ↩

3. “eave, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, December 2020. ↩

4. Compare “eaves, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, December 2020; “eaves, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022. ↩