"carve" is a valid and commonly used word in written English.
You can use it as both a verb, meaning “to cut or shape (something) by removing material”, as in, "He carved a wooden figure from a block of wood," or a noun, meaning “a figure or design cut or incised on a hard substance,” for example, "The wall was covered in intricate carvings."
This is the key question now facing Alasdair McDonnell and his embattled troops as they seek to carve out a survival strategy over the next few months: to be inside the tent or out; to offer the electorate something different other than crowing about the party's past record of promoting non-violent nationalism and historic compromise with unionism.
Early in 1940 they rented a small house in St Ives and for the next three years Hepworth was unable to carve at all; she had neither the means, nor the time.
The answer is not much, at least of ample significance to carve out a distinct identity.
The BBC reporter (I didn't catch her name) asked McGuinness about the comment made by Alistair McDonnell from the SDLP who said the executive would be a "carve up" between Sinn Féin and the DUP with the other parties expected to be "nodding donkeys".
Boko Haram has been waging a six-year military campaign to carve out an Islamic state in northern Nigeria.
Thousands have been killed and about 1.5 million displaced during Boko Haram's six-year insurgency to carve out a state adhering to strict Islamic law in Nigeria, Africa's biggest economy and top oil producer.
Muriel Gray, chair of the board of governors (who has vowed that her first act will be to re-carve the naughty graffiti she engraved into the library woodwork as a student) has stated that the school of art "will die if it becomes a museum".
Every major political party is in government, which many people already disillusioned with politics regard as a cynical carve-up on sectarian-cantonal lines.
"It has been a hundred years since we were divided between the four devils," he says, referring to the regional carve-up of Kurdish lands after the first world war between the rump of Ottoman Turkey, Iran, Syria (then run by France) and Mesopotamia (run by Britain, and soon to become Iraq).
Similarly, the French, who have been a constant pain in talks between America and Europe, could argue that since America's leaders seem determined to attach conditions to a fast-track bill, France's demands for carve-outs deserve consideration, too.At home meanwhile, Democratic opposition could harden.
And its carve-up of provincial power between the Social Democrats and the People's Party is particularly gross.
