Fir

How to spell fir

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce fir

What does fir mean?

1. nounAn evergreen coniferous tree with flat needles and upright cones, often grown for timber or as a Christmas tree.

Fir in a sentence

• The hillside was planted with rows of tall fir for timber.

• They cut a young fir from the plantation to decorate at Christmas.

Where does fir come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This is a plain, old Germanic tree name that reached modern English through Middle English 'firre', and it is thought to come from a Scandinavian source closely related to Old Norse 'fyri' and 'fura', both meaning the pine or fir tree. The same family of words shows up across the northern languages, including Danish 'fyr' and German 'Fohre', which all point back to a shared Germanic root for these tall, resinous evergreens. Old English itself had a related form, 'furh', but the spelling and sound of the modern word owe a great deal to the Norse contact during and after the Viking settlements in Britain. Over time the word narrowed to mean the firs and related conifers rather than every needled evergreen. The short, three-letter spelling makes it a near-perfect twin of 'fur', the animal coat, and that is precisely why writers have to slow down and pick the right one.

How the word is built

• fir (single root: the coniferous tree; no prefix or suffix)

Words that sound like fir

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• fur: The soft, thick hair that covers the body of certain animals, or the pelt used for clothing.