clove
noun/kləʊv/
/kləʊv/
- [countable, uncountable] the dried flower of a tropical tree, used in cooking as a spice, especially in sweet foods. Cloves look like small nails.Topics Foodc2, Plants and treesc2
Want to learn more?
Find out which words work together and produce more natural sounding English with the Oxford Collocations Dictionary app.
- [countable] a garlic clove | a clove of garlic one of the small separate sections of a bulb (= the round underground part) of garlic
- Use one crushed clove of garlic.
Word Originsense 1 Middle English: from Old French clou de girofle, literally ‘nail of gillyflower’ (from its shape), gillyflower being originally the name of the spice and later applied to the similarly scented pink. sense 2 Old English clufu, of Germanic origin, corresponding to the first element of German Knoblauch (altered from Old High German klovolouh), and the base of cleave ‘to split something in two’.
Check pronunciation:
clove