Fur

How to spell fur

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce fur

What does fur mean?

1. nounThe soft, thick hair that covers the body of certain animals, or the pelt used for clothing.

Fur in a sentence

• The cat shed clumps of fur all over the sofa.

• She refused to buy a coat made from real fur.

Where does fur come from?

Language of origin: French

The word fur entered English in the 1300s from the Old French forrer, meaning 'to line or trim with fur', and the related noun forre, which meant a 'sheath' or 'lining'. Those French forms trace back further to a Frankish (Germanic) root that meant a covering or case, the same idea of something that wraps or protects. In its earliest English use, fur referred to the lining of a garment rather than the animal coat itself, and only later did it shift to mean the soft hairy coat of an animal and the pelts taken from it. The short, plain spelling hides a common trap, because fur sounds identical to fir, the evergreen tree, so writers must rely on meaning rather than sound to choose correctly.

How the word is built

• fur (single root from Old French forre: sheath, lining)

Words that sound like fur

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

• fir: An evergreen coniferous tree with flat needles and upright cones, often grown for timber or as a Christmas tree.