Etymology: The form clover is very rare before 1600 (one example of clouerec1265), and did not prevail much before 1700; the usual Middle English and 16th cent. form was claver. The earliest Old English glossaries have clabre, clafre; late West Saxon had clæfre feminine. Compare Middle Low German klêver, klâver (masculine), Low German kláver, klêwer, klêber, East Frisian klafer, kläfer, klefer, North Frisian kliawar (masculine), Dutch klaver (feminine), Danish klever, klöver, Norwegian klöver, klyver, Swedish klöfwer masculine. The vowel relations of some of these are not clear; but it appears certain that the earliest English form was cláƀre, cláfre weak feminine < Old Germanic type klaiƀrôn-, apparently a compound having its first element identical with Old High German chlêo, -wes (Middle High German klê -wes, modern German klee) masculine ‘clover’, and its latter part a worn-down form of some unidentified word. The prevalent Middle English claver apparently represents a form clæfre with shortened vowel (compare never < nǽfre), while the current clover represents the Old English cláfre, retained in some dialect, whence it at length spread out and became the standard form.Claver is the form in B. Googe, Lyte, Gerarde, Cotgrave, Surflet & Markham, Bacon, Coles, Parkinson, Salmon.

Etymology: < clover n.Previous versions of the OED give the stress as: ˈclover.