Verb

to wave (third-person singular simple present waves, present participle waving, simple past and past participle waved)

1. (intransitive) To move back and forth repeatedly.

   The flag waved in the gentle breeze.

2. (intransitive) To wave one’s hand in greeting or departure.

   I waved goodbye from across the room.

3. (intransitive) To have an undulating or wavy form.
4. (intransitive, baseball) To swing and miss at a pitch.

   Jones waves at strike one.

5. (transitive) To cause to move back and forth repeatedly.

   The starter waved the flag to begin the race.

6. (transitive) To signal (someone or something) with a waving movement.
7. (intransitive) To try, in public, to attract people into a business establishment.

Derived terms

• waver

In mathematics and science, a wave is a disturbance that travels through space and time, usually by transference of energy. Waves are described by a wave function that can take on many forms depending on the type of wave. A mechanical wave is a wave that propagates through a medium due to restoring forces produced upon its deformation. For example, sound waves propagate via air molecules bumping into their neighbors. This transfers some energy into these neighbors, which will cause a chain reaction of collisions between the molecules. When air molecules collide with their neighbors, they also bounce away from them (restoring force). This keeps the molecules from actually traveling with the wave.

Waves travel and transfer energy from one point to another, often with no permanent displacement of the particles of the medium—that is, with little or no associated mass transport. They consist instead of oscillations or vibrations around almost fixed locations. Imagine a cork on rippling water, it would bob up and down staying in about the same place while the wave itself moves outward. When we say that a wave carries energy but not mass, we are referring to the fact that even as a wave travels outward from the center (carrying energy of motion), the medium itself does not flow with it.

There are also waves capable of travelling through a vacuum, e.g. electromagnetic radiation (including visible light, ultraviolet radiation, infrared radiation, gamma rays, X-rays, and radio waves). They consist of period oscillations in electrical and magnetic properties that grow, reach a peak, and diminish to zero in a periodic fashion.

Researchers believe that gravitational waves travel through space, although gravitational waves have never been directly detected. (See gravitational radiation.)