Definition of "scarve"

He liked the air of discreetness that scarved the town—the atmosphere of gentility and circumspection and tread-wariliness and calf-bound bookishness in which it was steeped.

1924 June, L. A. Morrison, “He Liked Bournesouth”, in John Middleton Murry, editor, The Adelphi, volume II, number 1, page 31

[…] Of opal clouds that scarve the sky / When pearl grey wisps of dusk float by, / Of lace that spiders have spun new / To catch a drift of tinsel dew; […]

1928, Lexie Dean Robertson, “This Loveliness I Know”, in Red Heels, Dallas, Tex.: The Southwest Press, page 78

Winding black clouds scarved its base, black streaks on its snow top; […]

1968, Jack Ludwig, Above Ground, Boston, Mass., Toronto, Ont.: Little, Brown and Company, page 161

The mist that had scarved his eyes dissolved and he saw everything at once with new and startling perception, aware of the folds and pleats of the curtains and in Laurie’s dress, the texture of which stood out as clearly as features in a rarefied landscape opening before his eyes.

1974, Christy Brown, A Shadow on Summer, New York, N.Y.: Stein and Day, published 1975, page 94

He’s there and there she is, curled up fetally inside the shabby old orange sleeping bag on the mattress, the brocade headrag loosely scarving her bare head against the cold.

1993, Tabitha King, One on One, Signet Books, page 330

Richard gently removed the soft hands that scarved his neck.

1999, Isolde Martyn, The Maiden and the Unicorn, Bantam Books, page 297

That began to change a year or two later when, seduced by the extraordinary, proto-apocalyptic cover art of Thomas Pynchon’s V. in its Bantam edition—a stormy Tanguy flatland surrounded by distant, blood-rivered mountains and occupied only by an ultra-realistic, silk-bedizened woman whose red hair scarved her face, and, beside her, a giant, Rockwell-font V carved from stone , all of it a painting signed by someone named ‘Bama’—I stole what might’ve been my first Adult Novel.

2003, The Believer, page 57, column 3

The wisping mists of cold that scarved the tubes grew more dense, more active, until the whole room was clammy with their breath.

1982, Ardath Mayhar, chapter 3, in Runes of the Lyre, New York, N.Y.: Atheneum, page 85

[…] he sensed no other world than what he saw, he caught no glimpse of some celestial river other than the chimneys of the humbling Oise and the soft fog that scarved the hills at morning, though, inexplicably, aspens with one noise silvered her name, a joy without a warning.

2000, Derek Walcott, Tiepolo’s Hound, New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, page 86

Fog, the same fog cowl Chiara wore, / That scarved her hair and shoulders, before, after, during the rain.

2013, Jennifer Atkinson, “Canticle of Assisi Rain”, in Canticle of the Night Path, Parlor Press LLC

I scarved her shoulders, struck to gold, / I starved for her face till Time grew old / And faltered in its tide.

1914, William Rose Benét, The Falconer of God and Other Poems, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press; London: Humphrey [Sumner] Milford, Oxford University Press, page 16

She has scarved her head like a gypsy in a tie-dyed rag with a fringe that looks like it might once have been a doily in some old tabby’s musty parlor.

1993, Tabitha King, One on One, Signet Books, page 73

She trusted me to scarve her shoulders, her creatures snoozed below our bed.

2015, Alan Gould, “And We Had Hands”, in Geoff Page, editor, The Best Australian Poems 2015, Black Inc.

All of it brought back precious memories of when her mother dressed and scarved her and tucked her all nice and tight into her warm winter gear, then kissed her on her rosy cheeks as she anxiously bounced up and down and couldn’t wait to get out and play with Tristan, throw snowballs or make forts and winged creatures in the snow and laugh all day long.

2019, Warren Kenneth Clyde, Pangerath: Enter The Dark Wizard