1
a
: to wrench open or tear apart or to pieces : rend
b
: to split with force or violence
2
a
: to divide into pieces or fractions
an organization being riven by controversy
b
: fracture
: to become split : crack
Synonyms
Examples of rive in a Sentence
road pavement that had been riven by the annual freeze-and-thaw cycle
the bitter disappointment threatened to rive my heart in two
Recent Examples on the Web
Now the scramble is on to define the future of Syria, quickly, to prevent ethnic, political, and sectarian rivalries from triggering a war even more divisive than the conflict that has riven the nation for thirteen years.
—
Robin Wright, The New Yorker, 15 Dec. 2024
In his unvarnished memoir, Laymon explores the cumulative mass of a past that has brought him to this point: his Blackness; his fraught relationship to food; his family, riven by loss and addiction and, in his mother’s case, a kind of pathological perfectionism.
—New York Times, 8 July 2024
And there’s a reason the past decade or so has been a time in which friendships, families, and civic life have been riven by politics.
—Karl Vick, TIME, 2 July 2024
Instead, their overall package will probably be riven with disagreements and feature plenty of hollow calls, as has been the case in the past.
—Arunabha Ghosh, Foreign Affairs, 4 Nov. 2022
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Robin Wright, The New Yorker, 15 Dec. 2024
In his unvarnished memoir, Laymon explores the cumulative mass of a past that has brought him to this point: his Blackness; his fraught relationship to food; his family, riven by loss and addiction and, in his mother’s case, a kind of pathological perfectionism.
—New York Times, 8 July 2024
And there’s a reason the past decade or so has been a time in which friendships, families, and civic life have been riven by politics.
—Karl Vick, TIME, 2 July 2024
Instead, their overall package will probably be riven with disagreements and feature plenty of hollow calls, as has been the case in the past.
—Arunabha Ghosh, Foreign Affairs, 4 Nov. 2022
See all Example Sentences for rive
Dictionary Entries Near rive
Cite this Entry
“Rive.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rive. Accessed 24 Jan. 2025.
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