Other forms: diving, dives, dived
To dive is to go into water head first, arms straight out in front. Off the side of the pool, off a rock into the sea, off the high board with a turn on the way down.
Divers with tanks on their backs dive to wrecks and reefs, and that is diving too, though nobody jumps. Anything dropping fast and steeply dives: a hawk dives on a mouse, a plane dives, and prices dive when a company loses a contract. You dive into a book, dive into your bag for the keys, and in football a player who dives falls over to win a free kick that was never there. A dive is also a cheap, grubby bar. Watch the past tense — dived in Britain, dove across much of America, and both are accepted.
1verbdiveTo jump into water head first.~27%
“She dived from the side and swam a length underwater.”
2verbswimTo swim under water using breathing equipment.~48%
“They dive on the wreck twice a day in summer.”
3verbdropTo drop steeply and quickly through the air.~14%
“The gull dived towards the water and came up with a fish.”
4verbfallTo fall sharply in value.~2%
“Share prices dived after the announcement.”
5nounjumpA jump into water, head first.~2%
“His dive barely made a splash.”
6nouncheapA cheap, dirty bar or club.~7%
“The band spent two years playing dives on the edge of town.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 14 sentences found in the wild and placed 14 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Two Old English verbs collapsed into one here. Dyfan meant to dip or immerse, which is what you do to something else, while dufan meant to duck under and sink, which is what you do yourself. Middle English let them merge into diven, and the words deep and dip are relatives.
Proto-Germanic
*dūbijaną
Old English
dȳfan — to dip, immerse
Middle English
diven
English, today
dive
Built from
From Middle English diven, duven, from the merger of Old English dȳfan (“to dip, immerse”) (from Proto-Germanic dūbijaną) and dūfan (“to duck, dive, sink, penetrate”) (past participle ġedofen). Cognate with Icelandic dýfa (“to dip, dive”), Low German bedaven (“covered, covered with water”). See also deep, dip.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA