oar

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See also: OAR and öar

English

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Wikipedia
an oar

Etymology

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

Noun

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
    • 19 October 1979, Madness (lyrics and music), “Night Boat to Cairo”, Suggs (lyrics)‎:
      The oar snaps in his hand
      Before he reaches dry land
      But the sound doesn't deafen his smile
      Just pokes at wet sand
      With an oar in his hand
      Floats off down the river Nile
      Floats off down the river Nile...
  2. An oarsman; a rower.
    He is a good oar.
  3. (zoology) An oar-like swimming organ of various invertebrates.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

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

Translations

row — see row

Anagrams

West Frisian

Etymology

From Old Frisian other.

Adjective

oar

  1. other
  2. different

Inflection

This adjective needs an inflection-table template.

Derived terms

Further reading

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