Delf

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Diplôme d'étude de langue française, a French-language qualification.
  2. 2
    A mine, quarry, pit dug; ditch. UK, archaic, dialectal
  3. 3
    an excavation; usually a quarry or mine wordnet
  4. 4
    A charge representing a square sod of turf, traditionally taking the form of a simple square (e.g. in the middle of an escutcheon), although modernly sometimes represented with the grass in profile.

    "two delves gules"

  5. 5
    Alternative form of delft (“style of earthenware”). alt-of, alternative

    "Five nothings in five plates of delf"

Synonyms

All synonyms
quarry

Example

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"Five nothings in five plates of delf"

Etymology

From Middle English delf, delve, dælf (“a quarry, clay pit, hole; an artificial watercourse, a canal, a ditch, a trench; a grave; a pitfall”), from Old English delf, ġedelf (“delving, digging”) and dælf (“that which is dug, delf, ditch”), from Proto-West Germanic *delban (“to dig”), from Proto-Germanic *delbaną (“to dig”). More at delve.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.