dove

Etymology 1

From Middle English dove, douve, duve, from Old English *dūfe (“dove, pigeon”), from Proto-West Germanic *dūbā, from Proto-Germanic *dūbǭ (“dove, pigeon”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰewbʰ- (“to whisk, smoke, be obscure”). Cognate with Scots doo, dow, Saterland Frisian Duuwe, West Frisian do, Dutch duif, Afrikaans duif, Sranan Tongo doifi, German Taube, German Low German Duuv, Dutch Low Saxon duve, doeve, Danish due, Faroese dúgva, Icelandic dúfa, Norwegian Bokmål due, Norwegian Nynorsk due, Swedish duva, Yiddish טויב (toyb), Gothic *𐌳𐌿𐌱𐍉 (*dubō).

noun

1. (countable) A pigeon, especially one smaller in size and white-colored; a bird (often arbitrarily called either a pigeon or a dove or both) of more than 300 species of the family Columbidae.
2. (countable, politics) A person favouring conciliation and negotiation rather than conflict.
3. (countable) Term of endearment for one regarded as pure and gentle.
4. A greyish, bluish, pinkish colour like that of the bird.
5. (slang, countable) Short for love dove (“tablet of the drug ecstasy”).

Etymology 2

A modern dialectal formation of the strong conjugation, by analogy with drive → drove and weave → wove.

verb

1. (chiefly Canada, US and England dialect) Strong simple past of dive
   2007: Bob Harris, Who Hates Whom: Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts, and Various Things Blowing up: A Woefully Incomplete Guide, §: Africa, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire, page 80, ¶ 4 (first edition; Three Rivers Press; →ISBN When coffee and cocoa prices unexpectedly dove, Côte d’Ivoire quickly went from Africa’s rich kid to crippling debtitude.
2. (nonstandard) past participle of dive