An archaic or dialectal variant of 'above,' found in older English texts, meaning higher than or over something.
Middle English variant of 'above,' showing sound changes where 'ov' became 've' in certain dialects. Common in 13th-15th century texts before standardization.
Before modern spelling, the same word could be written five different ways depending on the scribe's accent—'abave' for 'above' shows why reading Shakespeare feels like decoding, since every printer had their own spelling system.
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