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PlainSpell

pear

/pɛɹ/noun

pear is spelled P-E-A-R: 4 letters and one syllable. It appears 3.0 times per million words in written English, the 15,613th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). People search “pear vs peer” about 20 times a month (Google, United States). As a noun, pear means “An edible fruit produced by the pear tree, similar to an apple but typically elongated towards the stem” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of pear is pears.

How many letters and syllables are in pear?

Letters4: P-E-A-R
Syllables1 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing3.0 times per million words; the 15,613th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searchednone measured in search
Pairs people search
Sounds like
Rhymes with
Same letters

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How common is pear?

Pear appears 3.0 times per million words in written English, the 15,613th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce pear?

  • UK /pɛə/
  • British /pɛː/
  • US /pɛɹ/

Pear has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-uk-pear.ogg, En-us-pear.ogg, En-au-pair.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Words people confuse with pear

Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).

pear vs peer20 G
pair vs pear0 B
pare vs pear0 B

Sounds like: pair, pare, pere (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).

Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

What rhymes with pear?

The 12 most written words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as pear from its last stressed vowel (/ɛɹ/):

Spelled with the same letters in another order: rape, reap, pare, aper.

Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).

Forms of pear

  • pears plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does pear mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

    An edible fruit produced by the pear tree, similar to an apple but typically elongated towards the stem.

  2. 2

    A type of fruit tree (Pyrus communis).

  3. 3

    The wood of the pear tree (pearwood, pear wood).

  4. 4

    Choke pear (a torture device).

  5. 5

    avocado, alligator pear

  6. 6

    A desaturated chartreuse yellow colour, like that of a pear.

noun

as Pear
  1. 1

    An indigenous group in Cambodia and Thailand.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Pear in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchpoire (fruit), poirier (tree)
GermanBirne (fruit), Birnbaum (tree), Birnenholz, Birnbaumholz, Birnholz (wood of the pear tree)
Portuguesepera (fruit), pereira (tree)
Spanishpera (fruit), peral (tree)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does pear come from?

From Middle English pere, from Old English pere, from Proto-West Germanic *peru, from Vulgar Latin pira, originally the plural of Latin pirum but reconstrued as a feminine singular, ultimately a loanword from an unknown Mediterranean substrate source.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after pear