Boor or bore?
boor is a noun meaning “A peasant”; bore is a verb meaning “To inspire boredom in somebody”. Use boor as a noun and bore as a verb (bore is also a noun: “A hole drilled, bored, or milled through something”). In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) bore is about 65 times as common as boor.
What is the difference between boor and bore?
| boor | bore | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun | verb, noun |
| Meaning | A peasant A Boer, white South African of Dutch or Huguenot descent | To inspire boredom in somebody To make a hole through something A hole drilled, bored, or milled through something |
| Example | I question if any man ever saw his absent friend more clearly than did Shakespeare his Falstaff, for instance, or Scott his Balfour of… | to bore someone to death |
| Forms | boors | bores, boring, bored |
| Pronunciation | /bʊə/ /bɔː/ /bʊɹ/ | /bɔː/ /boɹ/ /bo(ː)ɹ/ |
| In writing | about once in every 8 million words | 8.5 times per million words |
Sources: boor and bore in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of boor and bore
boor
- 1
A peasant
- 2
A Boer, white South African of Dutch or Huguenot descent
- 3
A yokel, country bumpkin
- 4
An uncultured person; a vulgarian
I question if any man ever saw his absent friend more clearly than did Shakespeare his Falstaff, for instance, or Scott his Balfour of Burleigh. But does it, therefore, follow…
bore
- 1
To inspire boredom in somebody
to bore someone to death
- 2
A hole drilled, bored, or milled through something
the bore of a cannon
- 3
A sudden and rapid flow of tide occurring in certain rivers and estuaries which rolls up as a wave
- 4
To make a hole through something
- 5
AustraliaA borehole sunk into an artesian basin to provide a source of water
- 6
To make a hole with, or as if with, a boring instrument; to cut a circular hole by the rotary motion of a tool
to bore for water or oil
- 7
The diameter of such a hole
- 8
To form or enlarge (something) by means of a boring instrument or apparatus
to bore a steam cylinder or a gun barrel; to bore a hole
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, boor or bore?
boor appears about once in every 8 million words; bore 8.5 times per million words.
boor about once in every 8 million wordsbore 8.5 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search boor vs bore?
“boor vs bore” is searched about 40 times a month on Google and 10 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“bore vs boor”, “boor or bore”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.