Link Centre Dictionary

rave

UK/ɹeɪv/ US/ˈreɪv/ fairly common informal
noun (2) verb (3)

noun

1.

a dance party that lasts all night and electronically synthesized music is played

  • “raves are very popular in Berlin”
2.

an extravagantly enthusiastic review

  • “he gave it a rave”

verb

1.

participate in an all-night techno dance party

2.
3.

praise enthusiastically

  • “She raved about that new restaurant”
Synonyms

Origin

From northern Middle English raven, from Old Norse ráfa (“to wander, roam”), of uncertain and obscure origin. Perhaps from a dissimilation of Proto-Germanic *wab(b)ōną (“to sway, waver, swing, shake, wobble, totter, reel, careen”), from Proto-Indo-European *webʰ- (“to move, swarm, waft”). Cognate with Norwegian Nynorsk rava (“to wander, be delirious”). Doublet of rove. Compare also Middle Dutch reven (“to utter nonsense, rave, be drowsy”) (whence modern Dutch revelen (“to rave, talk nonsense”), Middle Low German rēven (“to be crazy, think and talk nonsensically”), Middle High German reben (“to move about, dream, be confused”) (compare Alemannic German räbeln (“to make loud noise”)).

Phrases

  • all the rave
  • mad person
  • rant and rave
  • rave drug

Related words

Word family

Broader terms

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.