sever

Other forms of sever

past tense

severred·

present participle

severring·

third person

severs·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about sever

What does sever mean?

sever means "set or keep apart". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in sever?

sever has 2 syllables: sev-er. The stress falls on "sev". In IPA it is /ˈsɛvɚ/.

What is another word for sever?

Close synonyms include break up, discerp, lop. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is sever a common word?

sever is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.