pear
UK /pɛə/ · US /pɛɹ/ noun, proper noun
Forms pears
- noun An edible fruit produced by the pear tree, similar to an apple but typically elongated towards the stem.
- noun A type of fruit tree (Pyrus communis).
- noun The wood of the pear tree (pearwood, pear wood).
- noun Choke pear (a torture device).
- noun (Jamaica) avocado, alligator pear
- noun A desaturated chartreuse yellow colour, like that of a pear.
- noun An indigenous group in Cambodia and Thailand.
- proper noun An endangered Mon-Khmer language of Cambodia.
Synonyms
Etymology
From Middle English pere, from Old English pere, from Proto-West Germanic *peru, from Vulgar Latin pira, originally the plural of Latin pirum but reconstrued as a feminine singular, ultimately a loanword from an unknown Mediterranean substrate source.
Cognate with Scots peer (“pear”), Saterland Frisian Peere, Pere (“pear”), West Frisian par (“pear”), Dutch peer (“pear”), Danish, Greenlandic, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk pære (“pear”), Faroese, Icelandic pera (“pear”), Swedish päron (“pear”), German Birne (“pear”), Luxembourgish Bier, Bir (“pear”), Vilamovian biyn (“pear”), Yiddish באַר (bar, “pear”), French poire (“pear”).
Webster’s 1913
- noun The fleshy pome, or fruit, of a rosaceous tree (Pyrus communis), cultivated in many varieties in temperate climates; also, the tree which bears this fruit. See Pear family, below. Pear blight.
Etymology [OE. pere, AS. peru, L. pirum: cf. F. poire. Cf. Perry.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “pear”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details