Synonyms for wave

noun

1. A wall of water

   comber, swell, roller, heave, tidal wave, billow, tide, surge, crest, bore, tube, breaker, whitecap, ripple, curl*.

2. A movement suggestive of a wave

   surge, gush, swell, uprising, onslaught, influx, tide, flow, stream, come and go, swarm, drift, rush, crush, line after line, fluctuation.

3. Undulating movement

   rocking, bending, winding, coil, curl, roll, twirl, loop, swirl, swing, sway, corkscrew, spring, lift, rippling.

4. A line suggestive of a wave

   scroll, kink, convolution, meander, loop, wavy line, twist, volute, curlicue.

wave is the general word for a curving ridge or swell in the surface of the ocean or other body of water; ripple is used of the smallest kind of wave, such as that caused by a breeze ruffling the surface of water; roller is applied to any of the large, heavy, swelling waves that roll in to the shore, as during a storm; breaker is applied to such a wave when it breaks, or is about to break, into foam upon the shore or upon rocks; billow is a somewhat poetic or rhetorical term for a great, heaving ocean wave

verb

1. To flutter

   stream, pulse, flow, shake, fly, dance, flap, swish, swing, tremble, whirl.

   Antonyms droop, fall*, hang listless.

2. To give an alternating movement

   motion, beckon, call, raise the arm, signal, greet, return a greeting, hail.

3. To move back and forth

   falter, waver, oscillate, vacillate, fluctuate, pulsate, vibrate, wag, waggle, sway, lurch, bend, swing, dangle, seesaw, wobble, reel, quaver, quiver, swing from side to side, palpitate, move to and fro; see also rock.

4. To undulate

   surge, roll, flow, wind, swell, billow, curl, twirl, swirl, coil, ripple, twist.

5. To set hair

   put up, curl, set, permanent, pin up, roll up.