oar

From Middle English ore (“oar”), from Old English ār, from Proto-West Germanic *airu, from Proto-Germanic *airō (“oar”). Cognate with Old Norse ár.

• In British & some other non-rhotic accents:
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ɔː/
  • (non-rhotic, without the horse–hoarse merger) IPA^(key): /oə/
  • Homophones: aw, awe (in non-rhotic accents with the horse–hoarse merger)
• In US & some other rhotic accents:
  • (General American) enPR: ôr, IPA^(key): /ɔɹ/

  • Audio (US)

    (file)

  • (rhotic, without the horse–hoarse merger) enPR: ōr, IPA^(key): /o(ː)ɹ/
  • Homophones: ore, o'er; or (in accents with the horse-hoarse merger)
• Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)

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

2. An oarsman; a rower.

   He is a good oar.

3. (zoology) An oar-like swimming organ of various invertebrates.

• stick one's oar in

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:

     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."

• AOR, AoR, Ora, ROA, Rao, Roa, aro, ora

From Old Frisian other.

oar

1. other
2. different

This adjective needs an inflection-table template.

• feroarje

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