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reave

/ɹiːv/obsolete

reave is a verb meaning “To plunder, pillage, rob, pirate, or remove” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled R-E-A-V-E and has one syllable, and it appears about once in every 47 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does reave mean?

verb

  1. 1

    archaicTo plunder, pillage, rob, pirate, or remove.

  2. 2

    archaicTo deprive (a person) of something through theft or violence.

  3. 3

    archaicTo split, tear, break apart.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce reave?

  • /ɹiːv/

Reave has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-reave.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of reave

  • reaves present, singular, he/she/it
  • reaving participle, present
  • reaved participle, past
  • reft participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is reave?

Reave appears about once in every 47 million words in written English, the 211,986th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Words people confuse with reave

Sounds like: reeve (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).

Sources: English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

Reave in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense to plunder, pillage, rob, pirate, or remove:

LanguageWords
Germanrauben
Spanishrobar

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does reave come from?

From Middle English reven, from Old English rēafian, from Proto-West Germanic *raubōn. Germanic cognates include West Frisian rave, Old English rēaf (“spoils, booty”)), and Old English past participle rofen (“torn, broken”), Norwegian rjuva, German rauben, Danish røve, and Swedish röva. Outside of Germanic, related to Latin rumpō (“to break”), Lithuanian rùpti (“to roughen”), Sanskrit रोपयति (ropayati, “to make suffer”)). See rob and reif.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).