Noun: delf
| Singular | delf |
| Plural | delfs; delves |
Sample Sentences
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two delves gules
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Five nothings in five plates of delf [1723, Jonathan Swift, Stella at Wood Park:]
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Suddenly a beautiful delf blue-and-white flower-pot, which had been set on the window-sill of an upper storey, fell to the ground with a crash, and the fragments spluttered up around my father's legs. [1848 April – 1849 October, E[dward] Bulwer-Lytton, chapter IV, in The Caxtons: A Family Picture, volume I, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, published 1849, →OCLC, part I, page 26:]
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That's all—do what we do, but noblier done— / Use plate, whereas we eat our meals off delf, / (To use a figure). [1864, Robert Browning, “Mr. Sludge, "The Medium"”, in Wikisource, line 832, retrieved 18 Jan 2012:]
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Men can't munch from meatless pots and doughless delf. [1941, Sarah Atherton, Mark's Own, Bobbs-Merrill:]
Nouns inflected like delf
pyramid roof,
neckkerchief,
neck kerchief,
waterleaf,
yellow dwarf,
hipped roof,
silverleaf,
cloverleaf,
baby beef,
nonself,
headkerchief,
longleaf,
peaked roof,
neckerchief,
semidwarf,
newhalf,
non-self,
handkerchief,
pockethandkerchief,
autumn leaf, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Middle English delf, delve, dælf (“a quarry, clay pit, hole; an artificial watercourse, a canal, a ditch, a trench; a grave; a pitfall”), from Old English delf, ġedelf (“delving, digging”) and dælf (“that which is dug, delf, ditch”), from Proto-West Germanic *delban (“to dig”), from Proto-Germanic *delbaną (“to dig”). More at delve. See: Middle English Nouns '
delf', Old English Nouns '
delf'.