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''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:: @ ⌗)
Link to original Footnotes
2006 February, Jill Kirchner Simpson, “Building a Modular Home”, in Country Living, volume 29, number 2, page 51: ↩
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 , archived from the original on 22 November 2021: ↩
“eave, n.”, in OED Online , Oxford: Oxford University Press, December 2020. ↩
Compare “eaves, n.”, in OED Online , Oxford: Oxford University Press, December 2020; “eaves, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022. ↩
Secondary
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