Etymology: apparently representing an unrecorded Old English *díeru , *déoru = Old High German tiurî , Middle High German tiure , Old Low German diuri feminine preciousness, glory, high value, dearness, dearth. Compare dear adj.¹

Etymology: Old English déore, earlier díore; in early West Saxon díere, late West Saxon dýre (but also déore as in non-West Saxon); a Common Germanic adjective, = Old Frisian diore, diure (West Frisian djoer, East Frisian dǖr). Middle Dutch diere, dûre (Dutch dier beloved, diuer high-priced), Old Saxon diuri (Middle Low German düre, Low German dǖr), Old High German tiuri glorious, distinguished, worthy, costly (Middle High German tiure, tiur, Middle German türe, German teuer), Old Norse dýrr worthy, precious, costly (Swedish, Danish dyr); Gothic not recorded. These forms point to Old Germanic type *deur-jo-, *diur-jo-.

Etymology: Old English déor; not known in the cognate languages, and of uncertain etymology.By some held to be intimately related to Old English déor animal (see deer n.). By others thought to contain the same radical form as dear adj.¹, and to differ only in the stem-suffix (*deur-o- ). In Old English, from the levelling of o- stems and jo- stems, déor was formally distinguishable fromdéore only in the nominative singular (of all genders), the accusative singular neuter, and nominative accusative plural neuter, which had déor , as against déore , déoru (-o ). Hence, when the final -e was lost or mute in Middle English, the two words became entirely identical in form. But in Old English, their senses appear to have been quite distinct; and, in later times, the sense of dere , dear , < déor was highly incongruous with those developed < déore (though intermediate or connecting links of meaning also arose). This difference of sense is a serious objection to the view that the two words are merely different formations from the same base, as in the pairs strong strenge , weorð wierðe , etc., where the two forms agree in sense. The ultimate etymology has been discussed by Karsten, Mod. Lang. Notes, 1892, 345. Common in Old English poetry, but found in no prose writing. In Middle English poetry, not known in southern writers, but in the East-Midland Genesis & Exodus, the West Midland Allit. Poems, Gawain & Green Knight, Piers Plowman, and the metrical Destruction of Troy (all these except the first being alliterative); it then appears in Spenser (by whom it was perhaps revived), occurs frequently in Shakespeare, in 17th cent. poets, and archaically in Shelley. By these later writers it was probably conceived of only as a peculiar poetical sense of dear adj.¹, and there are uses in Shakespeare evidently associated with both sense-groups.

Etymology: < dear adj.¹

Etymology: Old English díore , déore = Old High German tiuro , Middle High German tiure , tiuwer , German teuer : in Old English, through the reduction of the termination to e , not distinct in form from dear adj.¹ in Anglian.