elve

• Rhymes: -ɛlv

Obsolete form of elf.

elve (plural elves)

1. Obsolete form of elf.

   Sir Olof, he rode out at early day, / And so came he unto an Elve-dance gay.

   • 1796, Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Oxford, published 2009, page 61:

     Is it the offspring of thoughtless animal spirits, or the elve of fancy continually flitting round the expected pleasure?

From e(mission of) l(ight and) v(ery low-frequency perturbations from) e(lectromagnetic pulse sources), and to avoid clashing with the acronym ELF (extremely low frequency) used in the same field of science.^[1]

• ELVE, ELVES

elve (plural elves)

1. (astronomy, meteorology) A rapidly expanding disk-shaped region of red luminosity in the ionosphere, lasting less than a thousandth of a second, which occurs high above energetic cloud-to-ground lightning of positive or negative polarity.
   • 2006, Martin Füllekrug, Eugene A. Mareev, Michael J. Rycroft, Sprites, elves and intense lightning discharges‎^[1], page 37:

     It is likely that the first elve was recorded with the Space Shuttle low-light camera.

• EELV, EVEL, elev., veel, vele

elv +‎ -e (possessive suffix)

• IPA^(key): [ˈɛlvɛ]
• Hyphenation: el‧ve

elve

1. third-person singular single-possession possessive of elv

From French élever.

• IPA^(key): /elve/

elve

1. high

   Synonym: ot

elve (medial form elve)

1. to raise
2. to heighten
3. to bring up

• elevasion