Meanings
- not comparableMade by carving, especially when intricately or artistically done.
The facades of the buildings fronting upon the avenue within the wall were richly carven […]
1920, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Thuvia, Maiden of Mars, HTML edition, The Gutenberg Project, published 20084 more examples
The beams that thro' the Oriel shine / Make prisms in every carven glass, / And beaker brimm'd with noble wine.
1842, Alfred Tennyson, “The Day-Dream. The Sleeping Palace.”, in Poems. […], volume II, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 151I can fancy myself there now, the sun and the sweetness of the orange blossom bewildering in their purity, the green parrotlings in a nest behind a carven god simmering away contentedly like half a dozen kettles until with an express train shriek a red and green parent whizzed past me bearing a dinner for one, […]
1903 April 11, F[lora] A[nnie] Steel, “The Beasts That Perish”, in The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art, volume 95, number 2,476, London, page 449, column 1She was in love. Rapt, she studied every lineament of the pale and perfect face—the brow from which bronze-coloured hair rose in tiers of burnished ripples; the large steel-coloured eyes, with their carven lids; the carven nose, and the plastic lips. She noted how long and slim were his fingers, and how slender his wrists. She noted the glint cast by the candles upon his shirt-front. The two large white pearls there seemed to her symbols of his nature. They were like two moons: cold, remote, radiant. Even when she gazed at the Duke’s face, she was aware of them in her vision.
1911, Max Beerbohm, chapter II, in Zuleika DobsonThe architecture was bewildering in its multiform complexity: great, sleepy-lidded faces of stone gazed down from the eight-sided towers; fantastic dragon-hybrids writhed entangled coils above portal and arch; many-armed and beast-headed gods thronged the paven ways, lining entire avenues in rank on rank of carven stone idols so innumerable as to suggest pantheons as populous as dynasties.
1999, Lin Carter, The Quest of Kadji, page 118
- archaicparticiplepastpast participle of carve.
We both loved her now and for all time, she was stamped and carven on our hearts, and no other woman or interest could ever raze that splendid die.
1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC
Synonyms & antonyms
adjectivemade for or formed by carving (‘carven’ is archaic or literary)
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
- Proto-Germanic*kurbanaz“cut, carved”
- Proto-West Germanic*korban
- Old Englishcorfen
- Middle Englishcarven
- Englishcarven
From Middle English carven, a variant (with the vowel modified to match the present stem) of Middle English corven, y-corven (“carved”), from Old English corfen, ġecorfen (“cut, carved”), from Proto-West Germanic *korban, from Proto-Germanic *kurbanaz (“cut, carved”), past participle of *kerbaną (“to carve”). Equivalent to carve + -en (past participle ending).
More words from Middle English, Old English, Proto-West Germanic
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Esperanto ĉizita
- ĉizitamade by carving
Russian вы́сеченный, вы́резанный
- вы́сеченный (výsečennyj)made by carving
- вы́резанный (výrezannyj)made by carving
Rhymes & wordplay
Anagrams
Cite this entry
carven. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/carven
“carven.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/carven. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “carven,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/carven.
Source: carven on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.