• (RP) IPA: /ɹəʊv/
• (America) IPA: /ɹoʊv/

rove (roves, present participle roving; past and past participle roved)

1. (obsolete, intransitive) To shoot with arrows (at).
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene I.3:

     And thou […] that with thy cruell dart / At that good knight so cunningly didst roue […]

2. (intransitive) To roam, or wander about at random, especially over a wide area.
   • 1912: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes, Chapter 1

     Now that he was in his prime, there was no simian in all the mighty forest through which he roved that dared contest his right to rule, nor did the other and larger animals molest him.

3. (transitive) To roam or wander through.
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book 8”, in Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books, London: Printed [by Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […] [a]nd by Robert Boulter […] [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], OCLC 228722708 ↗; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: The Text Exactly Reproduced from the First Edition of 1667: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554 ↗:

     Roving the field, I chanced / A goodly tree far distant to behold.

4. (transitive) To card wool or other fibres.
5. To twist slightly; to bring together, as slivers of wool or cotton, and twist slightly before spinning.
6. To draw through an eye or aperture.
7. To plough into ridges by turning the earth of two furrows together.
8. To practice robbery on the seas; to voyage about on the seas as a pirate.

• reeve

• German: herumtreiben, umherschweifen
• Italian: girovagare, vagabondare
• Russian: стра́нствовать
• Spanish: deambular, vagar

rove (plural roves)

1. A copper washer upon which the end of a nail is clinched in boatbuilding.
2. A roll or sliver of wool or cotton drawn out and lightly twisted, preparatory to further processing; a roving.
3. The act of wandering; a ramble.

   • In thy nocturnal rove one moment halt.

1. simple past tense of rive
2. simple past tense of reeve