hoar

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”).

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: hô, IPA^(key): /hɔː/
• (General American) enPR: hôr, IPA^(key): /hoɹ/

• Audio:

  (file)

• (rhotic, without the horse–hoarse merger) enPR: hōr, IPA^(key): /ho(ː)ɹ/
• (non-rhotic, without the horse–hoarse merger) IPA^(key): /hoə/
• Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)
• Homophone: whore

hoar

1. A white or greyish-white colour.

   hoar:  

2. Hoariness; antiquity.
   • 1796, Edmund Burke, A Letter from the Right Honourable Edmund Burke to a Noble Lord, 10th edition, London: For J. Owen, and F. and C. Rivington, page 52:

     His grants are engrafted on the public law of Europe, covered with the awful hoar of innumerable ages.

• (hoariness): agedness, ancientness, oldhood; see also Thesaurus:oldness

hoar (not comparable)

1. Of a white or greyish-white colour.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 10:

     hoar waters

   • 1816, Lord Byron, “Canto III”, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Canto the Third, London: Printed for John Murray, […], →OCLC, stanza CI:

     old trees with trunks all hoar

   • 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:

     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.

2. (poetic) Hoarily bearded.
   • 1751, Thomas Warton, Newmarket, a Satire:

     And lo, where rapt in beauty's heavenly dream
     Hoar Plato walks his olived Academe.

   • 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):

     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.

3. (obsolete) Musty; mouldy; stale.
   • 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:

     But a hare that is hoar / Is too much for a score / When it hoars ere it be spent.

4. (archaic) Figuratively, grey-haired with age.
   • 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^[1], page 202:

     Be Thou with me until Old-age, and even to hoar hairs do Thou carrie me. P. Isa. 46.4.

   • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVI, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 173:

     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.

• haar
• horehound

hoar (third-person singular simple present hoars, present participle hoaring, simple past and past participle hoared)

1. (obsolete, intransitive) To become mouldy or musty.
   • 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 136:

     But a hare that is hoar / Is too much for a score / When it hoars ere it be spent.

• Appendix:Colors

• Haro, Hora, ROAH, haor, haro, hora, oh ar

• Härre, haar, hoor, hàre

From Middle High German hār, from Old High German hār. Compare German Haar, Dutch haar, English hair, Swedish hår.

hoar n

1. (Gressoney, anatomy) hair (the long hair on a person's head)

• Patuzzi, Umberto, ed., (2013) Luserna / Lusérn: Le nostre parole / Ünsarne börtar / Unsere Wörter [Our Words], Luserna, Italy: Comitato unitario delle isole linguistiche storiche germaniche in Italia / Einheitskomitee der historischen deutschen Sprachinseln in Italien

hoar

1. indefinite plural of ho

hoar

1. present indicative of hoa

• hora