spar
/spɑɹ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.06 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To fight, especially as practice for martial arts or hand-to-hand combat.
Example Sentences
- "The Prince staid not his aunswere to devize, / But, opening streight the Sparre, forth to him came […]."
- "The church dores were sparred, Fast boltyd and barryd, Yet wyth a prety gyn I fortuned to come in, […]"
- "After early sparring, Spurs started to take control as the interval approached and twice came close to taking the lead. Terry blocked Rafael van der Vaart's header on the line and the same player saw his cross strike the post after Adebayor was unable to apply a touch."
- "KLASHNEKOFF: I take two glass then pass the spliff to my spars."
- "'Ello clart! How are you doin' spar? Let's have a look at your mobile phone there, that's fuckin' posh, innit?[…]that's fuckin' safe, spar!"
- "I don't care if you got friends in your car. Light up your whip and all of your spars."
Etymology
From Middle English sparre (“spar, rafter, beam”) (noun), sparren (“to close, bar”) (verb), from Middle Dutch sparre or Middle Low German Sparre, all ultimately from Proto-Germanic *sparrô (“stake, beam”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)par- (“beam, log”). Compare Dutch spar (“balk”), German Sparren (“rafter, spar”), Danish sparre (“spar”), Albanian shparr, shpardh (“kind of oak”). Perhaps also compare spear.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /spɑɹ/
- British English: /spɑː/
Usage
- Obsolete
- Transitive verb
- Countable
- Uncountable
- British usage