Haver
name, noun, verb ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
- 1 Oats (the cereal). Scotland, UK, dialectal
- 2 One who has something (in various senses).
"It is held / That valour is the chiefest virtue, and / Most dignifies the haver: if it be, / The man I speak of cannot in the world / Be singly counterpoised."
- 3 Alternative form of chaver. alt-of, alternative
- 4 The person who has custody of a document. Scotland
- 1 To hem and haw. British
"This didn't seem at all unlikely, but when I none the less havered, he insisted that his 'Egyptian fortune-teller' had confirmed it."
- 2 To talk foolishly; to chatter. Scotland
"To business, and no more havers."
- 1 A surname.
Example
More examples"This didn't seem at all unlikely, but when I none the less havered, he insisted that his 'Egyptian fortune-teller' had confirmed it."
Etymology
Borrowed from Scots haiver.
Borrowed from Scots haver, from Middle English haver, from Old Norse hafri (“oat, oats”), from Proto-Germanic *habrô (“oat, oats”), from Proto-Indo-European *kapro- (“goat”). Cognate with Dutch haver (“oats”) and German Hafer (“oat”).
From Middle English haver, havere, equivalent to have + -er.
From Hebrew חבר.
Related phrases
More for "haver"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.