sheave

• IPA^(key): /ʃiːv/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -iːv

Middle English, from a Germanic base akin to German Scheibe, late Old Norse skífa (“slice”), all ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *skey- (“to split”). For more see shive.

sheave (plural sheaves)

1. A wheel having a groove in the rim for a rope to work in, and set in a block, mast, or similar; the wheel of a pulley.
   • 1942 September and October, Charles E. Lee, “The Stanhope & Tyne Railway: II–Self-Acting Inclines”, in Railway Magazine, page 263:

     To an exceptional degree the duties on these inclines have been passed on from father to son; many a boy has begun his working life in oiling the sheaves and, after passing through every grade, has reached the age of retirement in the responsible position of brakesman.

2. A sliding scutcheon for covering a keyhole.

See sheaf.

sheave (third-person singular simple present sheaves, present participle sheaving, simple past and past participle sheaved)

1. To gather and bind into a sheaf.
   • Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Czar Alexander the Second, lines 1-4

     From him did forty million serfs (...) receive

     Rich freeborn lifelong land, whereon to sheave

     Their country's harvest.

• pulley on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• “sheave”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

• heaves, heveas, shavee