[app. a variant of STEW v., a. OF. estuver. Cf. STIVE sb.1 In mod. use often with mixture of the sense of STIVE v.1, to pack tightly, and sometimes associated with STIFLE v.]
† 1. trans. To boil slowly: = STEW v. Obs. rare.
c. 1390[?]. Forme of Cury (1780), 37. Do the flessh therewith in a Possynet and styue [printed styne] it.
[1743. Lye, in Junius’ Etymol., Stive or stew meat, carnem lento igne coquere. Su. stufwa à stew, Laconicum, q.v. Hinc to stive one, Aliquem æstu ferè suffocare.]
2. To shut up in a close hot place; to stifle, suffocate.
a. 1722. Lisle, Husb. (1757), 444. [The sparrow] chooses then, when the weather grows warm,… to build sub dio, and not to stive herself up in nests under the eaves of a house.
[1743: see sense 1.]
1748. Richardson, Clarissa (1811), VII. 131. I have one half of the house to myself;… while … the two musty nieces are stived up in the other half.
1837. T. Hook, Jack Brag, xvii. You did not suppose I was going to be stived up in this place.
1840. Geo. Eliot, in Cross, Life (1885), I. 77. O how luxuriously joyous to have the wind of heaven blow on one after being stived in a human atmosphere.
1865. J. Payn, Married beneath him, III. 181. What your husband needs is an immediate change of air and scene. He has been stived up here in town too long.
3. intr. To ‘stew,’ suffocate.
1806. J. Beresford, Miseries Hum. Life, V. I. 83. The holes of happiness in which you have been stiving for the last two or three months.
1876. Geo. Eliot, Dan. Der., liv. One can get rid of a few hours every day in that way, instead of stiving in a damnable hotel.
b. Of a fighting-cock (cf. STOVE v. and STIVE sb.3).
1704. Lond. Gaz., No. 4063/4. The said Pens are now … built over the Pit, and very convenient to the Sparring and Stiving Rooms, much to the Advantage of the Feeders, and Cocks feeding, sparring and stiving.
Hence Stived ppl. a. (chiefly in comb. stived-up), deprived of fresh air; Stiving vbl. sb., attrib. in stiving-room (sense 3 b); Stiving ppl. a., suffocating.
1598. Brandon, Octavia, II. B 7. What monstrous greefe, what horror, thus constrains My stiuing hart, his lodging to forsake.
1704. Stiving room [see 3 b].
1847. L. Hunt, Men, Women, & Bks. (1876), 74. Sofa-bedsteads … in ‘stived-up’ little rooms.
1880. B. W. Richardson, in Fraser’s Mag., Nov., 670. The stived-up children of the metropolis.
1894. N. Brooks, Tales of Maine Coast, 59. I mounted to the fifth story of the rickety, stived building.
