spar

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. A rafter of a roof.
  2. A thick pole or piece of wood.
  3. A bar of wood used to fasten a door.
  4. Any linear object used as a mast, sprit, yard, boom, pole or gaff.
  5. A beam-like structural member that supports ribs in an aircraft wing or other airfoil.
verb
  1. To bolt, bar.
  2. To supply or equip (a vessel) with spars.
verb
  1. To fight, especially as practice for martial arts or hand-to-hand combat.
  2. To strike with the feet or spurs, as cocks do.
  3. To contest in words; to wrangle.
noun
  1. A sparring session; a preliminary fight, as in boxing or cock-fighting.
  2. A friend, a mate, a pal.
noun
  1. Any of various microcrystalline minerals, of light, translucent, or transparent appearance, which are easily cleft.
  2. Any crystal with readily discernible faces.
phrase
  1. Initialism of signal passed at red.
name
  1. A surname.

Pronunciation

/spɑː/ LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-spar.wav /spɑɹ/ [spɑɹ] [spɑ˞]

Word forms

spar spars sparring sparred

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.

This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.