Nave
name, noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 The middle or body of a church, extending from the transepts to the principal entrances.
"Then everybody once more knelt, and soon the blessing was pronounced. The choir and the clergy trooped out slowly, […], down the nave to the western door. […] At a seemingly immense distance the surpliced group stopped to say the last prayer."
- 2 A hub of a wheel.
"'Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune! All you gods, In general synod take away her power; Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel, And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven[…]"
- 3 the central area of a church wordnet
- 4 The ground-level middle cavity of a barn.
- 5 The navel. obsolete
"Till he faced the slave; / Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him, / Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps, / And fix'd his head upon our battlements"
- 1 A surname.
Example
More examples"The organist played Messiaen, and notes of all colors and aromas rained down upon the rapt audience in the nave of the church."
Etymology
Ultimately from Latin nāvem, singular accusative of nāvis, possibly via a Romance source. Doublet of nef and nau.
From Middle English nave, from Old English nafu, from Proto-West Germanic *nabu, from Proto-Germanic *nabō (compare Dutch naaf, German Nabe, Swedish nav), from Proto-Indo-European *h₃nebʰ- (“navel, hub”) (compare Latin umbō (“shield boss”), Latvian naba, Sanskrit नभ्य (nabhya)).
* As an English surname, from the noun knave. * As a German surname Näve, variant of Neff, see Neve. * As a Portuguese surname, from nave (“plain”), borrowed from Spanish nava, compare Nava.
Related phrases
More for "nave"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.