/ kləʊv; NAmE kloʊv/ noun
1.
[ C , U ] the dried flower of a tropical tree, used in cooking as a spice, especially to give flavour to sweet foods. Cloves look like small nails.
2.
[ C ] a garlic ~ | a ~ of garlic one of the small separate sections of a bulb (= the round underground part) of garlic
—picture at garlic
—see also cleave verb
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WORD ORIGIN
sense 1 Middle English : from Old French clou de girofle , literally nail of gillyflower (from its shape), gillyflower being originally the name of the spice and later applied to the similarly scented pink.
sense 2 Old English clufu , of Germanic origin, corresponding to the first element of German Knoblauch (altered from Old High German klovolouh ), and the base of cleave to split something in two .