Etymology Apparently from a Middle Dutch noun related to stuiven and cognate to German Staub (“dust”).
1
The floating dust in a flour mill caused by the operation of grinding.
1867, The British Farmer's Magazine, Volum LII, New Series, page 231, The removal of the heated air, steam, stive, and flour from the millstones, is a proposition which does not appear to be more than sufficiently well understood.
Derived terms
stive-box, stive-room
stive
verb
Etymology From Middle English stīven, alternative form of stūphen (“to steep (meat in a liquid)”), from Vulgar Latin *extuphāre, *extufāre, *extupāre, from ex- + Ancient Greek τύφω (túphō, “to smoke”). Compare Scots stove (“to stew”) (whence Irish stobh), Old French estuver (“to put into hot water”), and Dutch stoven (“to stew, simmer”).
1
UK, Dialectal To stew; to be stifled or suffocated.
1796, Amelia Simmons, American Cookery, 1996 Bicentennial Facsimile Edition, page 64, Let your cucumbers be ſmall, freſh gathered, and free from ſpots; then make a pickle of ſalt and water, ſtrong enough to bear an egg; boil the pickle and ſkim it well, and then pour it upon your cucumbers, and ſtive them down for twenty four hours; […] .
Etymology Related to Italian stivàre, Portuguese estivar.
1
Sometimes with up: to compress (something); to cram.
His chamber being commonly ſtived vvith Friends or Suiters of one kind or other, vvhen he gave his legs, armes, and breſt to his ordinary ſervants to button and dreſſe him vvith little heed, […] then the Gentleman of his Robes throvving a cloak over his ſhoulders, he vvould make a ſtep into his Cloſet, and after a ſhort prayer, he vvas gone: […]c. 1635 (date written), Henry Wotton, “Of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex; and George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham: Some Observations by Way of Parallel in the Time of Their Estates of Favour”, in Reliquiæ Wottonianæ. Or, A Collection of Lives, Letters, Poems; […], London: […] Thomas Maxey, for R[ichard] Marriot, G[abriel] Bedel, and T[imothy] Garthwait, published 1651, →OCLC, page 18:
And here I mist stay, / In this stived up kitchen to work all day.1836, T. S. Davis, editor, Kitchen Poetry: Every Body’s Album, volume 1, page 172:
1 more example
"Things are a good deal stived up," answered the Deacon.1851, Sylvester Judd, Margaret: A Tale of the Real and Ideal, Blight and Bloom, published 1871, page 284: