shelve

Other forms of shelve

past tense

shelved·

present participle

shelving·

third person

shelves·

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 shelve

What does shelve mean?

shelve means "hold back to a later time". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in shelve?

shelve has 1 syllable: shelve. In IPA it is /ˈʃɛlv/.

What is another word for shelve?

Close synonyms include postpone, prorogue, hold over, put over, table. 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 shelve a common word?

shelve is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.