lure
/lʉː.ə/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.67 in modern English
4
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
An artificial bait attached to a fishing line to attract fish.
noun
Alternative form of lur.
Example Sentences
- "How many have with a smile made small account Of Beauty and her lures"
- "the inch-at-a-time flutter of a surface lure"
- "My Faulcon now is ſharpe and paſſing emptie, / And til ſhe ſtoope ſhe muſt not be full gorg'd, / For then ſhe never lookes upon her lure."
- "It had been sixteen years since the BBC’s Grace Wyndham Goldie wrote her internal memo about luring him back to make sociological/scientific TV programmes. Now a second note had circulated, from the science department, proposing that he should present the Corporation’s next educative megaseries."
- "Professor is what you become after teaching for twenty to thirty years. Research Professor is what you then want to become, so you can finally stop worrying about students and do the research that lured you into academia in the first place!"
Etymology
From Anglo-Norman lure, from Old French loirre (Modern French leurre), from Frankish *lōþr, from Proto-Germanic *lōþr-, perhaps ultimately related to *laþō (“invitation, calling”), or from Proto-Indo-European *leh₂- (“to hide”). Compare English allure, also from Old French. Probably related to German Luder (“bait”).
Origin
- Source language: Old French
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /lʉː.ə/