Meaning

4 senses

  1. (Northern England, Scotland, dialectal)To sneak; skulk; proceed in a sly way; creep.

  2. (slang)To live life to the fullest while being successful, glamorous, and confident.

  3. (dialectal, obsolete, transitive)To cut; split; separate.

  4. (Scotland, dialectal, obsolete, transitive)To cut or slice something off; separate by slicing.

Origin

From Middle English sliven, from Old English slīfan (“to cleave, split”), from Proto-West

From Middle English sliven, from Old English slīfan (“to cleave, split”), from Proto-West Germanic *slīban, from Proto-Germanic *slībaną (“to split”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kelH- (“to cut”).

Back-formation from sliving, equivalent to blend of slay + live.

Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source

Forms

slives, sliving, slove, sliven
Base formslive · to slive
3rd person singularslives
Present participlesliving
Past simpleslove / slived
Past participlesliven / slived

irregular · Lesson

Present simpleLesson

I, you, we, theyslive
he, she, itslives

Past simpleLesson

all personsslove

Present perfectLesson

I, you, we, theyhave sliven
he, she, ithas sliven

Future simple (will)Lesson

all personswill slive

Word family

1 related words
Derivedtoslive

Lessons for this word

3 lessons

See also

neighbours in the dictionary
slitslitherC2sliverB2slobC1
slive — meaning, examples, forms, synonyms | Krumeto