spar
UK /spɑː/ · US /spɑɹ/ noun, verb, proper noun
Forms spars sparring sparred
- noun A rafter of a roof.
- noun A thick pole or piece of wood.
- noun (obsolete) A bar of wood used to fasten a door.
- noun (nautical) Any linear object used as a mast, sprit, yard, boom, pole or gaff.
- noun (aeronautics) A beam-like structural member that supports ribs in an aircraft wing or other airfoil.
- verb (obsolete or dialectal) To bolt, bar.
- verb (transitive) To supply or equip (a vessel) with spars.
- verb To fight, especially as practice for martial arts or hand-to-hand combat.
- verb To strike with the feet or spurs, as cocks do.
- verb To contest in words; to wrangle.
- noun A sparring session; a preliminary fight, as in boxing or cock-fighting.
- noun (MLE) A friend, a mate, a pal.
- noun (mineralogy) Any of various microcrystalline minerals, of light, translucent, or transparent appearance, which are easily cleft.
- noun (mineralogy) Any crystal with readily discernible faces.
- proper noun A surname.
Synonyms
Etymology
From Middle English sparre (“spar, rafter, beam”) (noun), sparren (“to close, bar”) (verb), from Middle Dutch sparre or Middle Low German Sparre, all ultimately from Proto-Germanic *sparrô (“stake, beam”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)par- (“beam, log”). Compare Dutch spar (“balk”), German Sparren (“rafter, spar”), Danish sparre (“spar”), Albanian shparr, shpardh (“kind of oak”). Perhaps also compare spear.
From Middle English sparren (“to dart out; to strike out”), from Old English sperran, spirran, spyrran (“to strike, strike out at, spar”), related to Low German sparre (“a struggling, striving”), German sich sperren (“to struggle, resist, oppose”), Icelandic sperrast (“to kick out at, thrust, struggle”). The slang sense of friend is probably from the phrase sparring partner under the influence of the similar slang words par and star.
From Middle Low German spar, sper (“spar”); or from a backformation of sparstone (“spar”), from Middle English sparston (“gypsum, chalk”), from Old English spærstān (“gypsum”). Related to German Sparkalk (“plaster”), Old English spæren (“of plaster, of mortar”).
Webster’s 1913
- noun An old name for a nonmetallic mineral, usually cleavable and somewhat lustrous; as, calc spar, or calcite, fluor spar, etc. It was especially used in the case of the gangue minerals of a metalliferous vein. Blue spar, Cube spar, etc. See under Blue, Cube, etc.
- noun A general term any round piece of timber used as a mast, yard, boom, or gaff.
- noun Formerly, a piece of timber, in a general sense; --still applied locally to rafters.
- verb To bolt; to bar. [Obs.] Chaucer.
Etymology [AS. spær in spærstan chalkstone; akin to MHG. spar, G. sparkalk plaster.]
Etymology [OE. sparre; akin to D. spar, G. sparren, OHG. sparro, Dan.& Sw. sparre, Icel. sparri; of uncertain origin. Spar, v. t.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “spar”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details