varve
/vɑːv/noun
varve is a noun meaning “An annual layer of sediment or sedimentary rock” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled V-A-R-V-E, and it appears about once in every 89 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of varve is varves.
What does varve mean?
noun
- 1
An annual layer of sediment or sedimentary rock.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce varve?
- UK /vɑːv/
- /vɑɹv/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-varve.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of varve
- varves plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is varve?
Varve appears about once in every 89 million words in written English, the 301,415th 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).
Varve in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense an annual layer of sediment or sedimentary rock:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | varve |
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 varve come from?
Borrowed from Swedish varv (“layer”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).