wear
pronunciation
How to pronounce wear in British English:
UK [weə(r)]
How to pronounce wear in American English:
US [wer]
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- Noun:
- impairment resulting from long use
- a covering designed to be worn on a person's body
- the act of having on your person as a covering or adornment
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- Verb:
- be dressed in
- have on one's person
- have in one's aspect; wear an expression of one's attitude or personality
- deteriorate through use or stress
- have or show an appearance of
- last and be usable
- go to pieces
- exhaust or tire through overuse or great strain or stress
- put clothing on one's body
Word Origin
- wear
- wear: [OE] Wear goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *wazjan, of whose other descendants only the Icelandic past participle varinn ‘clad’ survives. This was formed from the base *was-, which in turn was descended from Indo- European *wes-, source of Latin vestis ‘clothing’, from which English gets vest, vestment, etc.=> vest
- wear (v.)
- Old English werian "to clothe, put on, cover up," from Proto-Germanic *wazjan (cognates: Old Norse verja, Old High German werian, Gothic gawasjan "to clothe"), from PIE *wos-eyo-, from root *wes- (4) "to clothe" (cognates: Sanskrit vaste "he puts on," vasanam "garment;" Avestan vah-; Greek esthes "clothing," hennymi "to clothe," eima "garment;" Latin vestire "to clothe;" Welsh gwisgo, Breton gwiska; Old English wæstling "sheet, blanket;" Hittite washshush "garments," washanzi "they dress"). The Germanic forms "were homonyms of the vb. for 'prevent, ward off, protect' (Goth. warjan, O.E. werian, etc.), and this was prob. a factor in their early displacement in most of the Gmc. languages" [Buck]. Shifted from a weak verb (past tense and past participle wered) to a strong one (past tense wore, past participle worn) in 14c. on analogy of rhyming strong verbs such as bear and tear. Secondary sense of "use up, gradually damage" (late 13c.) is from effect of continued use on clothes. To wear down (transitive) "overcome by steady force" is from 1843. To wear off "diminish by attrition or use" is from 1690s.
- wear (n.)
- "action of wearing" (clothes), mid-15c., from wear (v.). Meaning "what one wears" is 1560s. To be the worse for wear is attested from 1782; noun phrase wear and tear is first recorded 1660s, implying the sense "process of being degraded by use."
Example
- 1. Wear clothing to protect exposed skin .
- 2. Models can 't even wear these shoes without stumbling .
- 3. How do you wear this thing ?
- 4. Swimmers wear special clothes and must follow a few rules .
- 5. She said her friends tended to wear circle lenses for their facebook photos .