Other forms: cloves
A clove is a dried flower bud used as a spice. Stick cloves in the ham, ground cloves, a clove of garlic.
The spice comes from a tree in the Moluccas and the trade in it shaped European empires in Asia. The oil numbs, which is why it was the old remedy for toothache. A clove of garlic is a different word, from cleave, meaning a split-off piece.
1nouncloveA dried flower bud used as a spice.
“She pushed a few cloves into an orange to make the room smell like Christmas.”
clove is a spice.
Old French clou de girofle means nail of clove, from Latin clavus, a nail, for the shape of the bud.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)kleh₂w-
Latin
clāvus — nail
Old French
clou (de girofle)
Middle English
clove
English, today
clove
Built from
From Middle English clove, an alteration of earlier clowe, borrowed from the first component of Old French clou (de girofle) (modern French clou de girofle), from Latin clāvus (“nail”) for its shape. Also see clāva (“knotty branch, club”). a doublet of clou and clavus.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA