Other forms: covered, covers, covering
To cover something is to put a thing over it, so that it is hidden or protected. Cover the pan, cover your mouth, snow covering the field. That physical picture is the root of every other sense, and there are a great many.
The useful extensions: to cover a subject is to deal with all of it, to cover a distance is to travel it, to cover a cost is to be enough to pay it, to cover a story is to report it, and to cover for somebody is to do their work or hide their absence. The noun follows the same fan — the cover of a book, cover from the rain, insurance cover, a cover version of a song, and cover in the military sense of somewhere to shelter from fire.
1verbcoverTo put something over a thing to hide or protect it.~14%
“Cover the dish and leave it to stand.”
synonyms: conceal, shield
2verblieTo lie over the whole surface of something.~10%
“Snow covered the road by six o'clock.”
3verbdealTo deal with a subject completely.~33%
“The course covers grammar and pronunciation.”
4nounoutsideThe outside of a book or magazine.~33%
“Her photograph was on the cover.”
5verbenoughTo be enough money to pay for something.~5%
“Twenty pounds will not cover the taxi.”
6nounprotectionProtection from weather, danger or loss.~5%
“We ran for cover when the rain started.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 26 sentences found in the wild and placed 21 of them on a sense (5 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
cover is a way of putting something over.
Latin cooperire is co-, wholly, plus operire, to close or shut — so to cover was originally to close something up entirely. The same operire lies behind aperture, which is its opposite: an opening.
Middle English
coveren
English, today
cover
Built from
From Middle English coveren. From Middle English coveren, borrowed from Old French covrir (modern French couvrir), from Latin coperire, from Latin cooperiō (“to cover completely”), from co- + operiō (“to close, cover”). Displaced native Middle English thecchen and bithecchen (“to cover”) (from Old English þeccan, beþeccan (“to cover”)), Middle English helen (“to cover, conceal”) (from Old English helan (“to conceal, cover, hide”)), Middle English wreon (“to cover”) (from Old English wreon (“to cover”)), Middle English hodren (“to cover up”) (from Low German hudren (“to cover up”)). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the original sense of the verb and noun cover was “hide from view” as in its cognate covert. Except in the limited sense of “cover again”, the word recover is unrelated and is cognate with recuperate. Cognate with Spanish cubrir and Portuguese cobrir.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA