Yar
adj, name, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To snarl; to gnar. intransitive
- 2 To growl, especially like a dog; quarrel; to be captious or troublesome. Scotland, intransitive
- 1 Sour; brackish. UK, dialectal
- 2 Quick and agile; easy to hand, reef and steer.
"The wynd was good, the Schip was yare."
- 1 Two rivers on the Isle of Wight, England, the Eastern Yar which reaches the sea at Bembridge, and the Western Yar at Yarmouth on the Solent. Both rivers are called the River Yar on Ordnance Survey Maps.
"At Merstone, The line to Sandown branches to the left, descends the ½ mile at 1 in 70 of Redway bank, and runs along the valley of the little River Yar (not to be confused with the River Yar in the western part of the island), through low-lying pleasing countryside, covered in spring and summer with wild flowers, to Horringford, 1¾ miles from Merstone."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"The wynd was good, the Schip was yare."
Etymology
From Middle English ȝaren, ȝurren, ȝeorren, from Old English ġeorran, ġirran, gyrran (“to sound, chatter, grunt, creak, grate”), from Proto-Germanic *gerraną (“to creak”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰer- (“to make a noise, rattle, gurgle, grumble”). Cognate with Scots yarr, yirr (“to snarl, growl, quarrel, cause trouble”), Middle High German girren (“to roar, cry, rattle, chatter”).
Uncertain.
From Middle English yar, ȝar, variants of yare, ȝare, from Old English ġearu (“ready”), from Proto-West Germanic *garu, from Proto-Germanic *garwaz.
More for "yar"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.