waive

• wave (obsolete)

• enPR: wāv, IPA^(key): /weɪv/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪv
• Homophone: wave

From Middle English weyven (“to avoid, renounce”), from Anglo-Norman weyver (“to abandon, allow to become a waif”), from Old French waif (“waif”), from gaiver (“to abandon”), ultimately of Scandinavian/North Germanic origin; see weyver.

waive (third-person singular simple present waives, present participle waiving, simple past and past participle waived)

1. (transitive, law) To relinquish (a right etc.); to give up claim to; to forgo.

   If you waive the right to be silent, anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.

   • 1907, John Ames Mitchell, Life - Volume 50, page 270:

     Exhibiting what the dramatic critics call a "fine restraint," he waives his timely opportunity for discourse upon the celebrated gyascutus, which, as any Northwestern tourist will tell you, haunts the slopes of the most precipitous mountains—always evading capture because its legs, shorter on the one side of the body than on the other, are peculiarly adapted to scooting up an inclined plane.

   • 2002 October 3, Kory Dodd, “Feds Announce Regs to Ban 'Frankenfish' Imports”, in FOX News:

     The federal government will ban the import of live northern snakeheads beginning Friday, waiving the normal 30-day waiting period

   • 2016 December 28, Dan Hernandez, “Is an even smaller New York apartment the key to sustainable living?”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     While there’s no reliable data on micro-housing, some notable policies and projects are popping up on that front too. Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg waived the city’s zoning standards to allow micro-apartments.

   1. (particularly) To relinquish claim on a payment or fee which would otherwise be due.
2. (now rare) To put aside, avoid.
   • a. 1683, Isaac Barrow, Sermon LIX, “Of obedience to our spiritual guides and governors”:

     […] seeing in many such occasions of common life we advisedly do renounce or waive our own opinions, absolutely yielding to the direction of others

3. (obsolete) To outlaw (someone).
4. (obsolete) To abandon, give up (someone or something).
   • 1851, Alexander Mansfield Burrill, Law Dictionary and Glossary:

     but she might be waived, and held as abandoned.

• waivable
• waiver

• waiver
• waif

From Middle English weyven (“to wave, waver”), from Old Norse veifa (“to wave, swing”) (Norwegian veiva), from Proto-Germanic *waibijaną.

waive (third-person singular simple present waives, present participle waiving, simple past and past participle waived)

1. (obsolete) To move from side to side; to sway.
2. (intransitive, obsolete) To stray, wander.

From Anglo-Norman waive, probably as the past participle of weyver, as Etymology 1, above.

waive (plural waives)

1. (obsolete, law) A woman put out of the protection of the law; an outlawed woman.
2. (obsolete) A waif; a castaway.
   • 1624, John Donne, Deuotions upon Emergent Occasions, and Seuerall Steps in My Sicknes: […], London: Printed by A[ugustine] M[atthews] for Thomas Iones, →OCLC; republished as Geoffrey Keynes, edited by John Sparrow, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions: […], Cambridge: At the University Press, 1923, →OCLC:

     […] what a wretched, and disconsolate hermitage is that house, which is not visited by thee, and what a waive and stray is that man, that hath not thy marks upon him?

• aview