• enPR: nāv, IPA: /neɪv/

Ultimately from Latin nāvem, singular accusative of nāvis, possibly via a Romance source.

nave (plural naves)

1. (architecture) The middle or body of a church, extending from the transepts to the principal entrances.
   • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter V, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC ↗:

     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. (architecture) The ground-level middle cavity of a barn.

• French: nef
• German: Schiff
• Italian: navata
• Portuguese: nave
• Russian: неф
• Spanish: nave

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- (compare Latin umbō, Latvian naba, Sanskrit नभ्य).

nave (plural naves)

1. A hub of a wheel.
   • c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC ↗, [Act II, scene ii]:

     '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 […]

2. (obsolete) The navel.
   • 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 I, scene i]:

     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

• navel

• French: moyeu
• German: Nabe
• Italian: mozzo
• Russian: ступи́ца

• As an English surname, from the noun knave.
• As a German - surname Näve, variant of Neff, see Neve.
• As a Portuguese - surname, from nave, borrowed from Spanish nava, compare Nava.

1. Surname.