"Cleaver" meaning in English

See Cleaver in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Proper name

Forms: Cleavers [plural]
Etymology: Occupational surname for someone who split wood, from Middle English clevere (“one who cleaves”). Etymology templates: {{der|en|enm|clevere||one who cleaves}} Middle English clevere (“one who cleaves”) Head templates: {{en-proper noun|s}} Cleaver (plural Cleavers)
  1. A surname from Middle English.

Inflected forms

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "enm",
        "3": "clevere",
        "4": "",
        "5": "one who cleaves"
      },
      "expansion": "Middle English clevere (“one who cleaves”)",
      "name": "der"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Occupational surname for someone who split wood, from Middle English clevere (“one who cleaves”).",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "Cleavers",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "s"
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      "expansion": "Cleaver (plural Cleavers)",
      "name": "en-proper noun"
    }
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "name",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
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        {
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          "source": "w"
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      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              101,
              108
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2015 June 18, Nate Chinen, “Review: Eric Revis Trio Lets the Music Lead the Way at the Jazz Gallery”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 16 Jun 2022:",
          "text": "The Eric Revis Trio, featuring the pianist Kris Davis, the bassist Eric Revis and the drummer Gerald Cleaver performing at the Jazz Gallery.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A surname from Middle English."
      ],
      "id": "en-Cleaver-en-name-Bz4-slhQ",
      "links": [
        [
          "surname",
          "surname"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "Cleaver"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "enm",
        "3": "clevere",
        "4": "",
        "5": "one who cleaves"
      },
      "expansion": "Middle English clevere (“one who cleaves”)",
      "name": "der"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Occupational surname for someone who split wood, from Middle English clevere (“one who cleaves”).",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "Cleavers",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "s"
      },
      "expansion": "Cleaver (plural Cleavers)",
      "name": "en-proper noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "name",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English proper nouns",
        "English surnames",
        "English surnames from Middle English",
        "English terms derived from Middle English",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Pages with 2 entries",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
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          ],
          "ref": "2015 June 18, Nate Chinen, “Review: Eric Revis Trio Lets the Music Lead the Way at the Jazz Gallery”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 16 Jun 2022:",
          "text": "The Eric Revis Trio, featuring the pianist Kris Davis, the bassist Eric Revis and the drummer Gerald Cleaver performing at the Jazz Gallery.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A surname from Middle English."
      ],
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    }
  ],
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}

Download raw JSONL data for Cleaver meaning in English (1.3kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-01-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-01-01 using wiktextract (96027d6 and 9905b1f). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.