Word Confusion: Waiver vs Wave vs Waver

Plural: waivers

Plural for the noun: waves
Gerund: waving

Third person present verb: waves
Past tense or past participle: waved
Present participle: waving

Plural for the noun: wavers
Gerund: wavering

third person present verb: wavers
Past tense or past participle: wavered
Present participle: wavering

[Legal] An intentional relinquishment of some right, interest, or the like

• A formal document recording the waiving of a right or claim

• A ridge of water between two depressions in open water
• A shape seen as comparable to a breaking wave
• [Usually the wave] An effect resembling a moving wave produced by successive sections of the crowd in a stadium standing up, raising their arms, lowering them, and sitting down again
• [Literary; the waves] The sea

A sudden occurrence of or increase in a specified phenomenon, feeling, or emotion

A gesture or signal made by moving one’s hand to and fro

A slightly curling lock of hair

• A tendency to curl in a person’s hair

[Physics] A periodic disturbance of the particles of a substance which may be propagated without net movement of the particles, such as in the passage of undulating motion, heat, or sound

• A single curve in the course of a wave
• A variation of an electromagnetic field in the propagation of light or other radiation through a medium or vacuum

[Used with a singular or plural verb] A member of the Women’s Reserve of the U.S. Naval Reserve, the distinct force of women enlistees in the U.S. Navy, organized during World War II ²

Verb, intransitive:
Move one’s hand to and fro in greeting or as a signal ¹

Move to and fro with a swaying or undulating motion while remaining fixed to one point

[Of hair] Grow with a slight curl

Verb, transitive:
Move (one’s hand or arm, or something held in one’s hand) to and fro ¹

• Convey (a greeting or other message) by moving one’s hand or something held in it to and fro
• Instruct (someone) to move in a particular direction by moving one’s hand

Style (hair) so that it curls slightly

To give a wavy appearance or pattern to, as silk

To flicker or quiver, as light

Become unsteady

• Begin to fail or give way

To shake or tremble, as the hands or voice

To feel or show doubt, indecision, etc.

• Vacillate

[Of things] To fluctuate or vary

To totter or reel

A person who waves or causes something to wave ²

A person who specializes in waving hair

Something, as a curling iron, used for waving hair

Verb, intransitive:
Shake with a quivering motion ¹

• Become unsteady or unreliable
• Be undecided between two opinions or courses of action
• Be irresolute

“Because Medicaid is not required to cover HCBS, because a waiver is not an entitlement, there are long waits for waivers” (Picciuto).

“The waiver waitlists are long enough if you live in one state without moving” (Picciuto).

“She implored a waiver of the forfeiture in her and young Walter’s favour” (Stebbing).

“You forgot to give me a waiver of responsibility when you talked me into varying the experiment” (Kuttner).

“Let him waiver or be uncertain in his decisions and woe is it to him” (Wells).

It was a wave of treetops that stretched to the horizon.

The crowd did the wave as their team scored again.

“Like as the waves make towards the pebbl’d shore, so do our minutes, hasten to their end” (Shakespeare).

A wave of strikes had effectively paralyzed the government.

There’s been a wave of flu across the country this winter.

A wave of Gestapo tactics is spreading throughout America.

Horror came over me in waves.

He has already made waves as a sculptor.

He gave a little wave and walked off.

His hair was drying in unruly waves.

Her hair has a slight natural wave.

A “traveling wave is a repeating pattern that is observed to move through a medium in uninterrupted fashion” (Traveling).

A sine wave can be written in the terms of χ.

Electromagnetic waves are created by charges in motion or by magnetic field created by charged particles.

“By mid-1943, 27,000 American women served in the WAVES program” (Chen).

Once the emergency was over, the U.S. Navy thought it would be able to retire the WAVES program.

Verb, intransitive:
He waved to me from the train.

The flag waved in the wind.

His thick, waving gray hair sprouted back from his forehead.

Verb, transitive:
He waved a sheaf of papers in the air.

We waved our farewells.

She waved him goodbye.

He waved the bus to a halt.

Her hair had been carefully waved for the evening.

She’s a waver, waves at everything.

Election time brings out the wavers of flags and haranguers of mobs.

I’m using this new waver. She does marvels with my hair.

Have you tried this new waver yet?

Verb, intransitive:
The flame wavered in the draft.

His love for her had never wavered.

She never wavered from her intention.

“But no sooner was the 40-year-old activist out of U.S. hands than he began to waver” (Kurtz).

“But that had no appreciable effect on military performance until the top leadership itself began to waver and retreat” (Sick).

A distant beam wavered and then disappeared.

When she heard the news, her courage wavered.

Her voice wavered with fear.

He wavered in his determination.

Prices wavered, but continued to rise anyway.

The modern usage of waiver is often short for waiver clause.

1. Old English wafian (a verb), from the Germanic base of waver. The noun is an alteration (influenced by the verb) of the Middle English wawe meaning (sea) wave.
2. It was first recorded in 1942.

1. Middle English from the Old Norse vafra meaning flicker is of Germanic origin.
2. It was first recorded in 1550–60, combining wave + -er.