oar

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Jump to navigation Jump to search
See also: OAR and öar

English[edit]

English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia
an oar

Etymology[edit]

From Middle English ore (oar), from Old English ār, from Proto-West Germanic *airu, from Proto-Germanic *airō (oar). Cognate with Old Norse ár.

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

oar (plural oars)

  1. A type of lever used to propel a boat, having a flat blade at one end and a handle at the other, and pivoted in a rowlock atop the gunwale, whereby a rower seated in the boat and pulling the handle can pass the blade through the water by repeated strokes against the water's resistance, thus moving the boat.
    Synonym: paddle
  2. An oarsman; a rower.
    He is a good oar.
  3. (zoology) An oar-like swimming organ of various invertebrates.

Derived terms[edit]

Translations[edit]

Verb[edit]

oar (third-person singular simple present oars, present participle oaring, simple past and past participle oared)

  1. (literary) To row; to travel with, or as if with, oars.
    • 1866, Thomas S. Muir, Barra Head, page 52:
      The weather was fine, and whilst oaring along I would fain have landed on the islands between; but fearful of a change, and already half worn-out by my previous trail, I let them go by with the comforting resolve of turning them up on some future occasion.
    • 1950, Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, →OCLC:
      Turning the long tables upside down — and there were twelve of them — they seated themselves, one behind another, within the upturned table tops as though they were boats and were about to oar their way into some fabulous ocean.
    • 1996, Peter J. Bowler, Life's Splendid Drama:
      In Nopsca's theory, flight evolved as a means of running more quickly over the ground: "Birds originated from bipedal, long-tailed cursorial reptiles which during running oared along in the air by flapping their free anterior extremities."

Derived terms[edit]

Translations[edit]

Anagrams[edit]

West Frisian[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Old Frisian other.

Adjective[edit]

oar

  1. other
  2. different

Inflection[edit]

This adjective needs an inflection-table template.

Derived terms[edit]

Further reading[edit]

  • oar (I)”, in Wurdboek fan de Fryske taal (in Dutch), 2011