cave1
/keɪv
/- This produces stalactites and related deposits in underground caves.
- The cavern is a natural cave carved into the rock by the sea, and widened into an underground canal by human hands.
- The cave has two main chambers, with a series of galleries and chambers leading off them.
Synonyms
- Most of the Polish cavers we caved with were hard.
- Howard, Martin, Sweeny and Snablet caved back through Hang Ho into Pitch Cave to follow a lead there.
- I found the way out quite a struggle; having not caved for 2 months I was a little out of practice.
- The dean promptly caved and told us that our party was now being called the ‘Annual’ party
- Once again, we'd both wanted the same thing - and, as before, I caved and picked something else.
- In other news: tonight I caved and bought the expensive cat litter.
Synonyms
Phrasal verbs
cave in
cave something in
Derivatives
cave-like
- Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away from Capitol Hill, deep within the cave-like laboratories of the infamous research centre that gave birth to the A-bomb, scientists have begun work on a new, highly classified project.
- Eventually she took my hand and drew me through a small door into a cave-like room where I was introduced to her father.
- Fluorescent lighting illuminates the white underside of the outer shell generating a soft iridescence that evokes the mystery of a subterranean grotto, with the cave-like auditorium at its heart.
caver
/ noun ...- What the group of relatively inexperienced cavers didn't know was that the heavy rain of the previous few days was seeping through the porous limestone rock and would quickly fill the cavern with freezing cold, rushing water.
- In high water conditions care is needed, but a trip through Manchester Hole, considered a classic river cave, can normally be accomplished by experienced cavers in about 30 minutes.
- The injured man was with a group of cavers who were going through a system using ropes.
Origin
Middle English: from Old French, from Latin cava, from cavus 'hollow' (compare with cavern). The usage cave in may be from the synonymous dialect expression calve in, influenced by obsolete cave 'excavate, hollow out'.
Latin cavus, ‘hollow’, is the origin of a number of English words, including cave, cavern (Late Middle English), cavity (mid 16th century), and excavate (late 16th century). Concave (Late Middle English) is from cavus preceded by con ‘with’, while convex (late 16th century) is from the Latin for ‘vaulted, arched’. In the days when more people knew Latin, there was a second English word spelled cave. This one, pronounced kah-vay, meant ‘beware!’, and was used from the mid 19th century by schoolchildren to warn their friends that a teacher was coming.
cave2
/ˈkeɪvi/Phrases
keep cave
Origin
Latin, imperative of cavere 'beware'.