Shrive

The verb 'to shrive' is archaic. It can be found in the works of Shakespeare and other Early Modern English texts, but only rarely in current English - and then largely in writing to do with that earlier time. It refers to the practice of confession in the Roman Catholic church. Its meaning seems always to have been dependent on context, and less than precise. It can be used of:

• the priest:
  • to mean 'hear the confession of', or
  • 'impose a penance on'.
• of the layman:
  • 'to be confessed', 'to take confession' or, more generally, 'to go to confession'
  • 'to receive penance'.

Other than these fairly literal meanings, various figurative usages are shown in OED.

'To shrive' is an irregular verb. Its forms are given here:

Base form	past tense	-ed participle	Remarks
shrive	shrove or - less preferred - shrived	shriven or - less preferred - shrived

This is one of the "the 250 or so irregular verbs" listed in Quirk 1985. The list "contains most of the irregular verbs in present-day English ... but is not meant to be exhaustive, particularly with regard to derivative verbs." AWE has copied most of the entries in that list. The verb 'to shrive' belongs to Quirk's Class 4 E