bear1
/bɛː
/verb (past bore /bɔː/; past participle borne /bɔːn/) [with object]
1(Of a person) carry: he was bearing a tray of brimming glasses the warriors bore lances tipped with iron...
- The shield maiden would bear the maiden warrior's shield in battle, hence the name.
- The pain of the early hour is alleviated by a member of staff bearing a tray of tea - who will wait until you take the tray, in case the roaming baboons get their hands on your home-baked cookies.
- The Selfridges car park was given a makeover for the occasion: vehicles were replaced by a catwalk, bright lights and waiters bearing trays of champagne.
Synonyms
carry, bring, transport, move, convey, take, fetch, haul, lug, shift;
deliver
informal tote
1.1(Of a vehicle or boat) convey (passengers or cargo): steamboats bear the traveller out of Kerrerra Sound...
- There, we'd toss in stones to watch the splashes, fill our water pistols with the murky brown water, and float leaf boats bearing wormy passengers.
- Lester spent a quiet night in the pen getting used to his new look and the next day was hoisted up on the back of a flatbed truck bearing a load of young women in white evening dresses, myself included.
- It seemed that everyone doubted the market for liquor all the way out here, and that few ships came bearing a load such as ours.
1.2Have or display as a visible mark or feature: many of the papers bore his flamboyant signature...
- Paulino Gimenez was cleaning a painting that he believed was by a little known contemporary of Goya's when he uncovered hidden features bearing the unmistakable mark of the Spanish master.
- Before being freed, she was fitted with a special leg ring bearing unique identification marks, which can be clearly seen through binoculars.
- Outwardly healthy, the animal bore no visible wounds or signs of illness.
Synonyms
display, exhibit, show, present, set forth, be marked with, carry, have
1.3Be called by (a name or title): he bore the surname Tiller...
- There's an investment banking firm that bears his name.
- The merchant bank thus created still bears his name - Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein.
- In the literary world, Catriona actually only turns up in Stevenson's sequel to Kidnapped, which bears her name as its title.
1.4 (bear oneself) Carry or conduct oneself in a specified manner: she bore herself with dignity...
- Yet despite his fierce appearance and the barbarous glint in his eyes, the Chief bore himself with a dignity no less than regal - so much so that Ravenna found her own father paling in comparison.
- Felicity Jones bears herself with dignity as a well-controlled Mariana.
- Few were the demonic females he had meet with such a fine physical shell and yet able to bear themselves with such dignity and self-control.
Synonyms
conduct oneself, carry oneself, acquit oneself, act, behave, perform
rare comport oneself, deport oneself
2Support; carry the weight of: walls which cannot bear a stone vault...
- You can't possibly blow it up, the mesh is mutually supporting, every girder bears the weight of everything above it.
- The sheer look in her eyes caused him to lose his balance, letting the wall bear all of his weight for him.
- It supported nothing, but was stout enough to have once borne a considerable weight, and likely, he thought, to have been a roof beam.
Synonyms
support, carry, hold up, prop up, keep up, bolster up;
brace, shore up, underpin, buttress, reinforce
2.1Take responsibility for: no one likes to bear the responsibility for such decisions the expert’s fee shall be borne by the tenant...
- I didn't want to bear the responsibility for this.
- Somebody in the band needs to bear the responsibility for keeping time, and keeping everybody else in the same ballpark.
- The bees are moral agents, he argues, and must bear the responsibility for their own actions.
Synonyms
sustain, carry, support, shoulder, uphold, absorb, take on
2.2Be able to accept or stand up to: it is doubtful whether either of these distinctions would bear scrutiny...
- Sadly, such a picture does not bear scrutiny, especially in the so-called top clubs, where discrimination on the grounds of age and sex is not only routine, but all too often is revelled in.
- But to shackle the BBC in the pursuit of original journalism would be entirely wrong - so long as the editorial processes bear scrutiny.
- The idea that the growing number of clubs standing on football's equivalent of death row are somehow the unfortunate victims of a natural disaster does not bear scrutiny.
Synonyms
withstand, stand up to, stand, put up with, take, cope with, handle, resist, sustain, absorb, accept
3Endure (an ordeal or difficulty): she bore the pain stoically...
- But, you see, it's the woman that bears the difficulties of the pregnancy.
- Barbosa, the keeper who failed to save Brazil from Uruguay in the 1950 final, still bears his disgrace.
- Those risk-takers who attempt this method bear the ignominy of the dreaded spot if they fail.
Synonyms
endure, tolerate, put up with, stand, suffer, abide, submit to, experience, undergo, go through, countenance, brook, brave, weather, support
informal stick, stomach, swallow
3.1 [with modal and negative] Manage to tolerate (a situation or experience): she could hardly bear his sarcasm [with infinitive]: I cannot bear to see you hurt...
- Unable to bear the situation any longer, Zhang Jianya turned to the court, alleging that Zhang Chun had criminally infringed upon his reputation.
- We all feel that we can no longer bear the situation as it is.
- It was pouring with rain, so the mouse's hair was all spiky and we picked it up in a glass and took it into the front garden but could hardly bear to put it down because it was so cute.
Synonyms
tolerate, stand, put up with, stomach, swallow, brook, undergo, accept, approve of, endorse, allow, admit, permit;
Scottish thole
informal stick, hack, abide
British informal wear, be doing with
archaic suffer
3.2 (cannot bear someone/thing) Strongly dislike: I can’t bear caviar...
- Rather, women in contemporary India are also ‘subjected to the suppressed anger of the middle-class man’ who ‘needs his wife's salary to savour the goodies, yet cannot bear her independence.’
- ‘If you cannot bear your name being mentioned in criticisms, then you'd better go home and be an ordinary citizen,’ she said.
- As Dostoevsky once remarked, Russians cannot bear their own freedom; they seek someone before whom to bend their knee.
4Give birth to (a child): she bore sixteen daughters [with two objects]: his wife had borne him a son...
- I myself had never had sisters or brothers - my mother had lost the ability to bear children at my birth.
- In 1851 he married Fanny Lucy Wightman, who was to bear six children, three of whom predeceased him.
- Herschel will leave nothing behind him because his late wife refused to bear children.
Synonyms
give birth to, bring forth, deliver, be delivered of, have, mother, create, produce, spawn;
conceive;
breed, procreate, reproduce;
North American birth
informal drop
literary beget
archaic engender, be brought to bed of
4.1(Of a tree or plant) produce (fruit or flowers): a squash that bears fruit shaped like cucumbers...
- But, the birds can be brought back, if the authorities take up the planting of suitable varieties of plants, trees bearing berries and fruit.
- Plants can bear flowers and fruits at the same time, and die after fruiting.
- Even the most crooked apple tree can eventually bear good fruit.
Synonyms
produce, yield, give forth, give, provide, supply, generate, afford, furnish, bestow
5 [no object, with adverbial of direction] Turn and proceed in a specified direction: bear left and follow the old drove road...
- The path bears right again to curve round under the summit.
- Nature should have told him that when he heads south from Alaska during his herd's annual autumn migration to warmer water, he has to bear right at San Francisco.
- The wide forest trail begins to bear west and continues Westerly to the 5K mark which is 100m before the minor trail junction (which leads to the summit road).
Synonyms
veer, curve, swerve, incline, turn, fork, diverge, deviate, bend;
go, move;
Sailing tack, sheer
Usage
Until the 18th century borne and born were simply variant forms of the past participle of bear, used interchangeably with no distinction in meaning. By around 1775, however, the present distinction in use had become established. At that time borne became the standard past participle used in all the senses listed in this dictionary entry, e.g. she has borne you another son, the findings have been borne out, and so on. Born became restricted to just one very common use, which remains the case today: in the passive, without by, as the standard, neutral way to refer to birth: she was born in 1965, he was born lucky, or I was born and bred in Gloucester.
Phrases
bear the brunt of
bear the burden of
bear fruit
bear a hand
bear something in mind
bear someone malice (or ill will)
bear a relation (or relationship) to
bear a resemblance (or similarity) to
bear witness (or testimony) to
be borne in on (or upon)
not bear thinking about
Phrasal verbs
bear away
bear down
bear down on
bear off
bear on
bear something out
bear up
bear with
Origin
Old English beran, of Germanic origin; from an Indo-European root shared by Sanskrit bharati, Greek pherein, and Latin ferre.
The verb bear comes from Indo-European. Related forms are found in Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, as well as in Latin and Greek. The core meaning is ‘to carry’. In English it is related to bier (Old English), the frame carrying a coffin or corpse. From early times bear has also been used of mental burdens, of suffering, or toleration. Wise people have encouraged us to bear and forbear, ‘be patient and endure’, since the 16th century, and from the mid 19th century others have told us more briskly to grin and bear it.
Bear, the large animal, is a different Old English word that also goes back to ancient times. In Stock Exchange terminology a bear is a person who sells shares hoping to buy them back later at a lower price (the opposite of a bull). The use is said to be from a proverb warning against ‘selling the bear's skin before one has caught the bear’.
Rhymes
bear2
/bɛː/noun
1A large, heavy mammal which walks on the soles of its feet, having thick fur and a very short tail. Bears are related to the dog family but have an omnivorous diet.
- Family Ursidae: several genera and species.
- The five national and sixty six provincial parks contain a healthy population of bighorn sheep, mountain goats, elk, bears, wolves, bison and woodland caribou.
- Polar bears are closely related to bears like the grizzly, but are considered marine mammals since they have adopted a marine lifestyle.
1.1A teddy bear.So, you could say I am having the best of my childhood now, buying bears, jigsaw puzzles, paper dolls and what have you....
- It has raised more than £1m through the sale of toy bears.
- Howard handed Schwarzenegger a pair of RM Williams boots, while the governor gave the Australian leader a toy bear.
1.2 informal A rough, bad-mannered, or uncouth person: if I make a mistake he goes mad with rage—he’s a bear...
- ‘I go out with my mates a lot,’ she says when I suggest she might just be a little bit of a square bear.
- He can't come across as the bad news bear, lest people decide they don't want to listen to doomsday prophesies for the next four years.
- This time Mrs. Blade calls in and she is a bear in the morning.
1.3A large, heavy, cumbersome man: a lumbering bear of a man...
- It's not fun, it does hurt, abominably, and I do feel like a lumbering bear, huffing and puffing like Pooh on a bad day.
- Did you ever hear someone describe a big, lumbering, warm-hearted bear of a guy?
- When you spend a good time alone, like a week, without hardly saying a word to anyone, with hardly any phone calls, you tend to retreat into lumbering bear mode.
1.4 (the Bear) informal A nickname for Russia.
2 Stock Market A person who sells shares hoping to buy them back later at a lower price. Often contrasted with bull1.The same also holds true if bears push prices down but cannot achieve a close near the low, in which case a buy signal is issued....
- But the bears priced at the bottom level will not be vintage, and certainly will not be by any of these makers.
- If prices fall to a new low but bear power shows a higher bottom, prices are falling and bears become weaker.
Said to be from a proverb warning against ‘selling the bear's skin before one has caught the bear’
Phrases
like a bear with a sore head
loaded for bear
Origin
Old English bera, of West Germanic origin; related to Dutch beer and German Bär.