hive
- 01 B2 Upper Intermediate
n.a container or natural place where bees live and make honey.
n.a natural or man-made structure used as a habitation for a colony of honeybees.
Simple“The beekeeper carefully opened the hive to check on the health of the queen.”
In context“Wild honeybees often establish a hive within the hollow of an old oak tree, protected from the wind and rain.”
Synonymsbeehive - 02 C1 Advanced
n.a place full of people who are very busy and moving around quickly.
n.a place or situation teeming with busy occupants or intense activity.
Simple“The office was a hive of activity as the team prepared for the big launch.”
In context“By mid-morning, the stock exchange floor had become a hive of frantic energy, with traders shouting orders over the constant din of telephones.”
- 03 B2 Upper Intermediate
n.a red, itchy bump on your skin, often caused by an allergy.
n.a single lesion of urticaria; an itchy, swollen area of the skin typically resulting from an allergic reaction.
Simple“He noticed a small hive on his arm after walking through the tall grass.”
In context“The patient presented with a solitary hive on the forearm, which quickly spread into a systemic case of urticaria after further exposure to the allergen.”
UsageUsually used in the plural form 'hives' to describe the condition.
Synonymsweltwheal - 04 C2 Proficiency
n.a specific part of the computer's registry where settings are stored.
n.a discrete logical group of keys, subkeys, and values in the Windows Registry that has a corresponding set of supporting files.
Simple“The system administrator had to repair a corrupted registry hive to fix the boot error.”
In context“Each hive is associated with a specific file on the hard drive, allowing the operating system to load user-specific configurations during the login process.”
- 05 C2 Proficiency
v.to put bees into a hive or to store something away for later.
v.to collect bees into a hive or, metaphorically, to store or accumulate resources in a central place.
Simple“The farmers would hive the grain in large barns to prepare for the winter.”
In context“The corporation managed to hive away its profits in various offshore accounts to minimize its annual tax burden.”
Synonyms
From Middle English hyve, from Old English hȳf, from Proto-West Germanic hūfi, from Proto-Indo-European kuHp- (“water vessel”), from *kew- (“to bend, curve”). See also Dutch huif (“beehive”), Danish dialect huv (“ship’s hull”); also Latin cūpa (“tub, vat”), Ancient Greek κύπη (kúpē, “gap, hole”), κύπελλον (kúpellon, “beaker”), Sanskrit कूप (kū́pa, “cave”). Doublet of coupe, cup, and keeve. The computing term was chosen as an in-joke relating to bees; see https://web.archive.org/web/20150715222122/http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/08/54618.aspx.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.