What does cive mean?
Cive is an older English name for the chive, Allium schoenoprasum, a hardy perennial herb of the onion family. Like its close relatives, it grows in dense tufts of slim, hollow leaves and bears rounded purple flower heads. In the kitchen, cive is valued for its mild onion flavor: the leaves are snipped fresh over eggs, potatoes, soups, salads, and cream sauces, where gentle heat or none at all preserves their delicate taste. The word entered English by way of French, and for centuries it appeared in herbals, garden books, and cookery writing alongside other kitchen alliums such as leeks, onions, and garlic. Today it survives mainly as a literary, regional, or deliberately archaic variant, having been almost entirely displaced by the standard form "chive." Knowing cive is useful to readers of older horticultural and culinary texts, and it offers a small reminder of how thoroughly Anglo-Norman and French vocabulary shaped the English kitchen garden.
A chive; the plant Allium schoenoprasum, cultivated for its slender, onion-flavored leaves.
"The old walled garden still had a patch of cive growing by the kitchen door."
Largely obsolete in modern English; understood today mainly in historical or dialect contexts.
The leaves of the chive plant used fresh as a garnish or flavoring.
"Fold a little chopped cive through the soft cheese before serving."
Often treated as an uncountable mass noun when referring to the cut herb.
The plural cives is rare and appears chiefly in older or botanical writing; in culinary use the word is typically uncountable.
"The beds were divided between cives, leeks, and parsley."
"Cive" is simply what English used to call the chive before "chive" took over — the word is a direct borrowing from French, where la ciboulette's cousin still answers to cive.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of cive
Cive comes from Old French cive, meaning the chive plant, which itself traces back through Vulgar Latin forms to Latin cepa, "onion." It was borrowed into Middle English and long served as the ordinary English word for the plant, appearing in medieval and early-modern herbals and cookery. Over time the parallel borrowing "chive" — ultimately from the same French source via cive/cheve variants — displaced it, leaving cive as a largely obsolete or dialectal synonym.
How cive is actually used
Now rare or dialectal in English; "chive" is the ordinary term in both British and American usage. Cive appears mostly in older texts, translations from French, and regional varieties.
Easily confused with cive
Chive is the standard modern English name for the same plant; cive is an older, chiefly French-influenced synonym that survives mainly in regional or historical usage.
A civet is a catlike mammal (or its musky secretion), whereas cive is a plant of the onion family.