Dictionaries › English

rear

Pronunciation: /ˈɹɪə/

The English word “rear” has 20 meanings listed here.

verb

  1. To bring up to maturity, as offspring; to educate; to instruct; to foster.
  2. To breed and raise.
  3. To rise up on the hind legs.
  4. To get angry.
  5. To rise high above, tower above.
  6. To raise physically or metaphorically; to lift up; to cause to rise, to elevate.
  7. To construct by building; to set up
  8. To raise spiritually; to lift up; to elevate morally.
  9. To lift and take up.
  10. To rouse; to strip up.
  11. To place in the rear; to secure the rear of.
  12. To sodomize (perform anal sex)
  13. To move; stir.
  14. To carve.
  15. To revive, bring to life, quicken. (only in the phrase, to rear to life)

adjective

  1. Being behind, or in the hindmost part; hindmost.

adverb

  1. early; soon

noun

  1. The back or hindmost part; that which is behind, or last in order.
  2. Specifically, the part of an army or fleet which comes last, or is stationed behind the rest.
  3. The buttocks or bottom.

Etymology

From Middle English reren (“to raise”), from Old English rǣran (“to raise, set upright, promote, exalt, begin, create, give rise to, excite, rouse, arouse, stir up”), from Proto-West Germanic *raiʀijan, from Proto-Germanic *raizijaną, *raisijaną (“to cause to rise, raise”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁rey- (“to lift oneself, rise”). Cognate with Scots rere (“to construct, build, rear”), Icelandic…

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “rear” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.