helve

From Middle English helfe, helve; from Old English hielfe, from Proto-Germanic *halbiją.

• IPA^(key): /hɛlv/
• Rhymes: -ɛlv

helve (plural helves)

1. The handle or haft of a tool or weapon.
   • 1917, Robert Frost, The Ax-helve:

     It was the bad ax-helve someone had sold me— / “Made on machine,” he said, plowing the grain […]

   • 1974, Guy Davenport, Tatlin!:

     The eyelet in the rose pilleum of his glans welled a clear bead that silled under the corona, wound the veinclomb helve, and ran a snailtrack down the thrum and ridge of the underduct.

   • 1982, Lawrence Durrell, Constance, Faber & Faber 2004 (Avignon Quintet), p. 847:

     Happily they were only sketchily armed, the group-leaders carried pistols and pick-helves.

2. A forge hammer lifted by a cam acting on the helve between the fulcrum and the head.

helve (third-person singular simple present helves, present participle helving, simple past and past participle helved)

1. (transitive) To furnish (an axe, etc.) with a helve.

From Proto-Finnic *helbeh, borrowed from Proto-Germanic [Term?] (whence Old High German helwa, helawa).

• IPA^(key): /ˈhelʋeˣ/, [ˈhe̞lʋe̞(ʔ)]
• Rhymes: -elʋe
• Syllabification^(key): hel‧ve

helve

1. (botany) lodicule

helve

1. vocative masculine singular of helvus

• hylve, helfe, hilve, halve, alffe, hellfe

From Old English helfe, from Proto-Germanic *halbiją.

• IPA^(key): /ˈhɛlv(ə)/, /ˈhilv(ə)/, /hɛlf/

helve

1. helve (grip of an implement)

• English: helve
• Scots: helf

• “helve, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2019-03-06.