hoar
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: enpr: hô
ipa: /hɔː/
enpr: hôr
ipa: /hoɹ/
note: rhotic, without the horse–hoarse merger
enpr: hōr
ipa: /ho(ː)ɹ/
note: rhotic, without the horse–hoarse merger
note: non-rhotic, without the horse–hoarse merger
ipa: /hoə/
rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)
homophone: whore
Etymology: From Middle English hor, hore, from Old English hār (“hoar, hoary, grey, old”), from Proto-West Germanic *hair, from Proto-Germanic *hairaz (“grey”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ḱeh₃- (“grey, dark”). Cognate with German hehr (“noble, sublime”), Herr (“sir, gentleman”), Scottish Gaelic ciar (“dusky”), and Russian се́рый (séryj, “grey”).
Senses: examples: text: hoar waters
ref: 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 10:
text: old trees with trunks all hoar
ref: 1816, Lord Byron, “Canto III”, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Canto the Third, London: […] [F]or John Murray, […], →OCLC, stanza CI:
text: Bright fell the moonlight on pillar and court and shattered wall, hiding all their rents and imperfections in its silver garment, and clothing their hoar majesty with the peculiar glory of the night.
ref: 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:
glosses: Of a white or greyish-white colour.
examples: text: And lo, where rapt in beauty's heavenly dream
Hoar Plato walks his olived Academe.
ref: 1751, Thomas Warton, Newmarket, a Satire:
text: This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
ref: 1847 November 1, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie, Boston, Mass.: William D. Ticknor & Company, →OCLC, (please specify either |part=I or II):
glosses: Hoarily bearded.
examples: text: But a hare that is hoar / Is too much for a score / When it hoars ere it be spent.
ref: c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iv], line 134:
glosses: Musty; mouldy; stale.
examples: text: Be Thou with me until Old-age, and even to hoar hairs do Thou carrie me. P. Isa. 46.4.
ref: 1648, Lancelot Andrewes, A manual of directions for the sick with many sweet meditations and devotions of the R. Reverend Father in God, Lancelot Andrews, late L. Bishop of Winchester: to which are added praiers for the morning, evening and H. communion, page 202:
text: The great popularity of the Stuarts—certainly more allied to personal causes than we can at present calculate—is a curious fact. It was not one of those feelings drawn from hoar antiquity, when habit has become religion.
ref: 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVI, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 173:
glosses: Figuratively, grey-haired with age.
Derived terms: Hoar Cross
hoared
hoarfrosted
hoarfrost
hoar frost
hoarhead
hoarness
hoarwithy
hoary
Related terms: haar
horehound