Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Preterit of tear.
  • noun A projecting knob or ball used as an ornament on furniture, as cradles and chairs.
  • noun The pommel of a saddle.
  • See tor.
  • noun The dead grass that remains on mowing land in winter and spring.
  • noun In architecture, same as torus, 1.
  • noun In geometry, a surface generated by the revolution of a conic (especially a circle) about an axis lying in its plane.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • imp. of tear.
  • noun Prov. Eng. The dead grass that remains on mowing land in winter and spring.
  • noun (Arch.) Same as torus.
  • noun (Geom.) same as torus.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Simple past of tear (rip, rend, speed).
  • adjective Hard, difficult; wearisome, tedious.
  • adjective Strong, sturdy; great, massive.
  • adjective Full; rich.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun commonly the lowest molding at the base of a column

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French, from Latin torus.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English tor, tore, toor, from Old Norse tor- ("hard, difficult, wrong, bad", prefix), from Proto-Germanic *tuz- (“hard, difficult, wrong, bad”), from Proto-Indo-European *dus- (“bad, ill, difficult”), from Proto-Indo-European *dēwǝ- (“to fail, be behind, be lacking”). Cognate with Old High German zur- ("mis-", prefix), Gothic 𐍄𐌿𐌶- (tuz-, "hard, difficult", prefix), Ancient Greek δυσ- (dys-, "bad, ill, difficult", prefix). More at dys-.

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