delf
English edit
Alternative forms edit
Etymology edit
From Middle English delf, delve, dælf (“a quarry, clay pit, hole; an artificial watercourse, a canal, a ditch, a trench; a grave; a pitfall”), from Old English delf, ġedelf (“delving, digging”) and dælf (“that which is dug, delf, ditch”), from Proto-West Germanic *delban (“to dig”), from Proto-Germanic *delbaną (“to dig”). More at delve.
Pronunciation edit
- Rhymes: -ɛlf
Noun edit
- A mine, quarry, pit dug; ditch.
- (heraldry) A charge representing a square sod of turf, traditionally taking the form of a simple square (e.g. in the middle of an escutcheon), although modernly sometimes represented with the grass in profile.
Canting arms of Delves, in Devon: Argent, a chevron gules fretty or between three delves sable. - two delves gules
- Alternative form of delft (“style of earthenware”)
- 1723, Jonathan Swift, Stella at Wood Park:
- Five nothings in five plates of delf
- 1848 April – 1849 October, E[dward] Bulwer-Lytton, chapter IV, in The Caxtons: A Family Picture, volume I, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, published 1849, →OCLC, part I, page 26:
- Suddenly a beautiful delf blue-and-white flower-pot, which had been set on the window-sill of an upper storey, fell to the ground with a crash, and the fragments spluttered up around my father's legs.
- 1864, Robert Browning, “Mr. Sludge, "The Medium"”, in Wikisource, line 832[1], retrieved 2012-01-18:
- That's all—do what we do, but noblier done— / Use plate, whereas we eat our meals off delf, / (To use a figure).
- 1941, Sarah Atherton, Mark's Own, Bobbs-Merrill:
- Men can't munch from meatless pots and doughless delf.
Derived terms edit
References edit
Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “delf”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)
Anagrams edit
Dutch edit
Pronunciation edit
Audio (file)
Verb edit
delf
- inflection of delven:
Middle Dutch edit
Alternative forms edit
Etymology edit
From delven (“to delve”). This etymology is incomplete. You can help Wiktionary by elaborating on the origins of this term. why -t in alt form
Noun edit
delf ?
- Delft (a city in the modern Netherlands)
Inflection edit
This noun needs an inflection-table template.
Descendants edit
- Dutch: Delft
Further reading edit
- “delf”, in Vroegmiddelnederlands Woordenboek, 2000
Middle English edit
Alternative forms edit
Etymology edit
From Old English delf, from delfan (Middle English delven).
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
delf (plural delves)
- A quarry (pit for digging stone or clay).
- A man-made channel or stream; a water-filled ditch.
- A hole or ditch; a delf.
Descendants edit
References edit
- “delf, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-08-12.
Old English edit
Etymology edit
From the verb delfan (“to delve, dig, dig out, burrow, bury”), from Proto-West Germanic *delban, from Proto-Germanic *delbaną, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰelbʰ-.
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
delf n (nominative plural delf)