Crossword Dictionary

What's The Definition Of Wave?

\Wave\, n. Something resembling or likened to a water wave, as in rising unusually high, in being of unusual extent, or in progressive motion; a swelling or excitement, as of feeling or energy; a tide; flood; period of intensity, usual activity, or the like; as, a wave of enthusiasm.
\Wave\ (w[=a]v), v. t. See {Waive}. --Sir H. Wotton. Burke.
\Wave\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. {Waved} (w[=a]vd); p. pr. & vb. n. {Waving}.] [OE. waven, AS. wafian to waver, to hesitate, to wonder; akin to w[ae]fre wavering, restless, MHG. wabern to be in motion, Icel. vafra to hover about; cf. Icel. v[=a]fa to vibrate. Cf. {Waft}, {Waver}.] 1. To play loosely; to move like a wave, one way and the other; to float; to flutter; to undulate. His purple robes waved careless to the winds. --Trumbull. Where the flags of three nations has successively waved. --Hawthorne. 2. To be moved to and fro as a signal. --B. Jonson. 3. To fluctuate; to waver; to be in an unsettled state; to vacillate. [Obs.] He waved indifferently 'twixt doing them neither good nor harm. --Shak.
\Wave\, v. t. 1. To move one way and the other; to brandish. ``[[AE]neas] waved his fatal sword.'' --Dryden. 2. To raise into inequalities of surface; to give an undulating form a surface to. Horns whelked and waved like the enridged sea. --Shak. 3. To move like a wave, or by floating; to waft. [Obs.] --Sir T. Browne. 4. To call attention to, or give a direction or command to, by a waving motion, as of the hand; to signify by waving; to beckon; to signal; to indicate. Look, with what courteous action It waves you to a more removed ground. --Shak. She spoke, and bowing waved Dismissal. --Tennyson.
\Wave\, n. [From {Wave}, v.; not the same word as OE. wawe, waghe, a wave, which is akin to E. wag to move. [root]136. See {Wave}, v. i.] 1. An advancing ridge or swell on the surface of a liquid, as of the sea, resulting from the oscillatory motion of the particles composing it when disturbed by any force their position of rest; an undulation. The wave behind impels the wave before. --Pope. 2. (Physics) A vibration propagated from particle to particle through a body or elastic medium, as in the transmission of sound; an assemblage of vibrating molecules in all phases of a vibration, with no phase repeated; a wave of vibration; an undulation. See {Undulation}. 3. Water; a body of water. [Poetic] ``Deep drank Lord Marmion of the wave.'' --Sir W. Scott. Build a ship to save thee from the flood, I 'll furnish thee with fresh wave, bread, and wine. --Chapman. 4. Unevenness; inequality of surface. --Sir I. Newton. 5. A waving or undulating motion; a signal made with the hand, a flag, etc. 6. The undulating line or streak of luster on cloth watered, or calendered, or on damask steel. 7. Fig.: A swelling or excitement of thought, feeling, or energy; a tide; as, waves of enthusiasm. {Wave front} (Physics), the surface of initial displacement of the particles in a medium, as a wave of vibration advances. {Wave length} (Physics), the space, reckoned in the direction of propagation, occupied by a complete wave or undulation, as of light, sound, etc.; the distance from a point or phase in a wave to the nearest point at which the same phase occurs. {Wave line} (Shipbuilding), a line of a vessel's hull, shaped in accordance with the wave-line system. {Wave-line system}, {Wave-line theory} (Shipbuilding), a system or theory of designing the lines of a vessel, which takes into consideration the length and shape of a wave which travels at a certain speed. {Wave loaf}, a loaf for a wave offering. --Lev. viii. 27. {Wave moth} (Zo["o]l.), any one of numerous species of small geometrid moths belonging to {Acidalia} and allied genera; -- so called from the wavelike color markings on the wings. {Wave offering}, an offering made in the Jewish services by waving the object, as a loaf of bread, toward the four cardinal points. --Num. xviii. 11. {Wave of vibration} (Physics), a wave which consists in, or is occasioned by, the production and transmission of a vibratory state from particle to particle through a body. {Wave surface}. (a) (Physics) A surface of simultaneous and equal displacement of the particles composing a wave of vibration. (b) (Geom.) A mathematical surface of the fourth order which, upon certain hypotheses, is the locus of a wave surface of light in the interior of crystals. It is used in explaining the phenomena of double refraction. See under {Refraction}. {Wave theory}. (Physics) See {Undulatory theory}, under {Undulatory}.
\Wave\, n. [See {Woe}.] Woe. [Obs.]