sleave

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “From Chambers 1908; needs cleanup.”) Compare Danish slöife, a loose knot, Swedish slejf (“a knot of ribbon”), German Schleife (“a loop”).

• IPA^(key): /sliːv/
• Rhymes: -iːv
• Homophones: sleeve, slieve

sleave (third-person singular simple present sleaves, present participle sleaving, simple past and past participle sleaved)

1. (weaving) To separate, as threads; to divide, as a collection of threads.

• sley

sleave (countable and uncountable, plural sleaves)

1. The knotted or entangled part of silk or thread.
2. Silk not yet twisted; floss.
   • c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ii]:

     Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care.

• “sleave”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

• Veales, leaves, salvee, veales