Etymology

reave

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Today it means: To plunder, pillage, rob, pirate, or remove. Full definition →

Middle English reven ← Old English rēafian ← Proto-West Germanic *raubōn
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reave · verb1

  1. Proto-West Germanic · inherited from*raubōn
  2. Old English · inherited fromrēafian
  3. Middle English · inherited fromreven
  4. English todayreave

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.

reave · verb2

Alteration of rive by confusion with the above.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.