delf

• delft, delve

From Middle English delf, delve, dælf (“a quarry, clay pit, hole; an artificial watercourse, a canal, a ditch, a trench; a grave; a pitfall”), from Old English delf, ġedelf (“delving, digging”) and dælf (“that which is dug, delf, ditch”), from Proto-West Germanic *delban (“to dig”), from Proto-Germanic *delbaną (“to dig”). More at delve.

• Rhymes: -ɛlf

delf (plural delfs or delves)

1. (archaic, UK, dialectal) A mine, quarry, pit dug; ditch.
2. (heraldry) A charge representing a square sod of turf, traditionally taking the form of a simple square (e.g. in the middle of an escutcheon), although modernly sometimes represented with the grass in profile.

   two delves gules

3. Alternative form of delft (“style of earthenware”).
   • 1723, Jonathan Swift, Stella at Wood Park:

     Five nothings in five plates of delf

   • 1848 April – 1849 October, E[dward] Bulwer-Lytton, chapter IV, in The Caxtons: A Family Picture, volume I, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, published 1849, →OCLC, part I, page 26:

     Suddenly a beautiful delf blue-and-white flower-pot, which had been set on the window-sill of an upper storey, fell to the ground with a crash, and the fragments spluttered up around my father's legs.

   • 1864, Robert Browning, “Mr. Sludge, "The Medium"”, in Wikisource, line 832‎^[1], retrieved 18 January 2012:

     That's all—do what we do, but noblier done— / Use plate, whereas we eat our meals off delf, / (To use a figure).

   • 1941, Sarah Atherton, Mark's Own, Bobbs-Merrill:

     Men can't munch from meatless pots and doughless delf.

• stonedelf

• “delf”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

• FDLE, fled

• Audio:

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delf

1. inflection of delven:
   1. first-person singular present indicative
   2. (in case of inversion) second-person singular present indicative
   3. imperative

• delft

From delven (“to delve”). This etymology is incomplete. You can help Wiktionary by elaborating on the origins of this term. why -t in alt form

delf ?

1. Delft (a city in the modern Netherlands)

This noun needs an inflection-table template.

• Dutch: Delft

• “delf”, in Vroegmiddelnederlands Woordenboek, 2000

• delfe, delve, dælf

From Old English delf, from delfan (Middle English delven).

• IPA^(key): /dɛlf/, /dɛlv/

delf (plural delves)

1. A quarry (pit for digging stone or clay).
2. A man-made channel or stream; a water-filled ditch.
3. A hole or ditch; a delf.

• English: delf, delve
• Scots: delf, delph

• “delf, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 12 August 2018.

From the verb delfan (“to delve, dig, dig out, burrow, bury”), from Proto-West Germanic *delban, from Proto-Germanic *delbaną, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰelbʰ-.

• IPA^(key): /delf/, [deɫf]

delf n (nominative plural delf)

1. digging, excavation
2. that which is dug: trench, quarry, canal

Strong a-stem:

• Middle English: delf, delfe, delve, dælf
  • English: delf, delve
  • Scots: delf, delph