Also 5 calfe, 5–6 calue, 7 calf, (9 dial. cauve). [OE. cealfian, f. cealf CALF sb.1; cf. the corresp. MHG. kalben, Du. kalven, Sw. kalfva, Da. kalve. See sense 3.]
1. intr. To give birth to a calf. Said of kine, deer, etc.; cf. CALF sb.1 1, 3.
c. 1000. Ælfric, Hom., II. 300. Ða wolde heo [seo cu] cealfian on ʓesihðe þæs folces.
1388. Wyclif, Job xxi. 10. The cow caluyed [1382 bar] and is not priued of hir calf.
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., XVII. xlix. (1495), 632. A Hynde … etith this herbe [diptannus] that she may calue eselier and soner.
1523. Fitzherb., Husb., § 70. If a cowe be fatte, whan she shall calve, than … the calfe shall be the lesse.
1674. trans. Scheffer’s Lapland, xxviii. 131. The does … calve about May.
1828. Scott, F. M. Perth, II. 293. ‘What’s the matter?’ said Dwining, ‘whose cow has calved?’
1860. Merc. Mar. Mag., VII. 213. They [whales] differ … in their habit of resorting to very shallow bays to calve.
b. transf.
1667. Milton, P. L., VII. 463. The grassie Clods now Calv’d, now half appeer’d The Tawnie Lion, pawing to get free His hinder parts.
2. trans. To bring forth (a calf, or young).
1388. Wyclif, Job xxi. 10. The cow … caluede [1382 bar] not a deed calf.
1532–3. Act 24 Hen. VIII., vii. Any maner yonge suckynge calfe … which shall happen to fall or to be calued.
1607. Shaks., Cor., III. i. 240. I would they were Barbarians, as they are, Though in Rome litter’d: not Romans, as they are not, Though calued i’ th’ Porch o’ th’ Capitoll.
1846. J. Baxter, Libr. Pract. Agric., II. 87. Of the origin of [the short horns] … little can be learned, prior to 1777, in which year the famous bull, Hubback, was calved.
3. Of a glacier or iceberg: To detach and throw off a mass of ice. Cf. CALF sb.1 6, and CALVE v.2
1837. Macdougall, trans. Graah’s E. Coast Greenl., 104. The Greenlanders believe that … the reverberation caused by the utterance of a loud sound, is sufficient to make an iceberg calve. Ibid., 132. One of the numerous large ice-blinks … calved a very considerable berg.
1873. A. L. Adams, Field & Forest Rambles, xi. 280. A vast field of ice at one time poured down the slope into the long fiord below, where it calved its bergs.
1882. H. Lansdell, Through Siberia, I. 199. The icebergs ‘calved’ as they went along, with much commotion and splashing.
