bear
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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4 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "bear", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "bear" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "bear" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
bear is aEnglishnoun. It means: A large, generally omnivorous mammal (a few species are purely carnivorous or herbivorous), having shaggy fur, a very small tail, and flat feet; a member of the family Ursidae. Pronounced /bɛə/. It ranks #1,985 in English word frequency. Often confused with br and bed.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | bear |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bɛə/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #1,985 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for bear is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bɛə/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,985 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 11 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for bear, with forms such as "baer", "bbear", and "bearr". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "br", "bed", "bet", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English bere, from Old English bera, from Proto-West Germanic *berō, from Proto-Germanic *berô, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰerH- (“brown”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Boar, Boare (“bear”), West Frisian bear (“bear”), Cimbrian, Mòcheno per (“… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is bear, spelled B-E-A-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A large, generally omnivorous mammal (a few species are purely carnivorous or herbivorous), having shaggy fur, a very small tail, and flat feet; a member of the family Ursidae.
- 2A large, generally omnivorous mammal (a few species are purely carnivorous or herbivorous), having shaggy fur, a very small tail, and flat feet; a member of the family Ursidae.
- 3A rough, unmannerly, uncouth person.
- 4An investor who sells commodities, securities, or futures in anticipation of a fall in prices.
- 5A state policeman (short for Smokey Bear).
- 6A large, hairy man, especially one who is homosexual.
- 7A koala (bear).
- 8A portable punching machine.
- 9A block covered with coarse matting, used to scour the deck.
- 10The fifteenth Lenormand card.
- 11Something difficult or tiresome; a burden or chore.
Etymology
From Middle English bere, from Old English bera, from Proto-West Germanic *berō, from Proto-Germanic *berô, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰerH- (“brown”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Boar, Boare (“bear”), West Frisian bear (“bear”), Cimbrian, Mòcheno per (“bear”), Dutch beer (“bear”), German Bär (“bear”), German Low German Boor (“bear”), Limburgish baer, Béër (“bear”), Luxembourgish Bier (“bear”), Vilamovian baor, bar (“bear”), West Flemish beir (“bear”), Yiddish בער (ber, “bear”), Danish, Faroese, and Norwegian Bokmål bjørn (“bear”), Icelandic, Swedish björn (“bear”), Norwegian Nynorsk bjøinn, bjønn, bjørn (“bear”), Gothic *𐌱𐌰𐌹𐍂𐌰 (*baira, “bear”). etymology notes This is generally taken to be from Proto-Indo-European *bʰerH- (“shining, brown”) (compare Tocharian A parno, Tocharian B perne (“radiant, luminous”), Lithuanian bė́ras (“brown”)), related to brown, bruin, and beaver. On this theory, the Germanic languages replaced the older name of the bear, *h₂ŕ̥tḱos, with the epithet "brown one", presumably due to taboo avoidance; compare Russian медве́дь (medvédʹ, “bear”, literally “honey-eater”). However, Ringe (2006:106) doubts the existence of a root *bʰer- meaning "brown" ("an actual PIE word of [the requisite] shape and meaning is not recoverable") and suggests that a derivation from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰwer- (“wild animal”) "should therefore perhaps be preferred", implying a Germanic merger of *ǵʰw and *gʷʰ (*gʷʰ may sometimes result in Germanic *b, perhaps e.g. in *bidjaną, but it also seems to have given the g in gun and the w in warm).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: baer,bbear,bearr,bera,ebar
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for bear
Misspelling Variants of "bear"
Frequency rank: #1,985 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our English index: