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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

oar.

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.

3 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ɔː/Received-Pronunciation/oɹ/General-American/oə//o(ː)ɹ/
  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.

  2. An oarsman; a rower.

    He is a good oar.
  3. An oar-like swimming organ of various invertebrates.

Where this word comes from

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

verb/ɔː/Received-Pronunciation/oɹ/General-American/oə//o(ː)ɹ/
  1. To row; to travel with, or as if with, oars.

    literary
Where this word comes from

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

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.