hoar

From Middle English hor, hore, from Old English hār (“hoar, hoary, grey, old”), from Proto-Germanic *hairaz (“grey”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱēy(w)-, *ḱyē(w)- (“grey”). Cognate with German hehr (“noble, sublime”) and Herr (“sir, gentleman”).

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

2. Hoariness; antiquity.
   • Burke

     Covered with the awful hoar of innumerable ages.

hoar (not comparable)

1. Of a white or greyish-white colour.
   • Edmund Spenser

     hoar waters

   • Byron

     old trees with trunks all hoar

2. (poetic) Hoarily bearded.
   • Thomas Warton

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

   • 1847 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie

     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.
   • 1593, William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, II. iv. 134:

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

• hoarfrost
• hoary
• hoared

• 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.
   • 1593, William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, II. iv. 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, hora, oh ar

• Härre, haar, hoor, hàre

From Old High German hār, from Proto-Germanic *hērą. Compare German Haar, Dutch haar, English hair, Swedish hår.

hoar n

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

• “hoar” in Patuzzi, Umberto, ed., (2013) Ünsarne Börtar [Our Words], Luserna, Italy: Comitato unitario delle linguistiche storiche germaniche in Italia / Einheitskomitee der historischen deutschen Sprachinseln in Italien

hoar

1. indefinite plural of ho

hoar

1. present tense of hoa.