Pear

How to spell pear

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce pear

What does pear mean?

1. nounA sweet, juicy fruit that is narrow at the stem and rounded at the base, grown on a tree.

Pear in a sentence

• She sliced a ripe pear into her morning porridge.

• She chose one ripe pear from the fruit bowl for her lunch.

Where does pear come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Pear comes from the Old English 'peru', the name for the familiar fruit, which was borrowed very early from the Latin 'pirum', meaning the same fruit. The Latin word spread across the Germanic and Romance languages, surviving as French 'poire' and Italian 'pera', all pointing back to that single classical source. English has kept the word in continuous use for well over a thousand years, changing only its spelling and pronunciation along the way. The trap for writers is purely auditory: 'pear' sounds exactly like 'pair' (a couple) and 'pare' (to trim), yet only the fruit takes this 'pea' plus 'r' spelling. Remembering that 'pear' begins like 'pea', the small green vegetable, helps anchor which spelling means the fruit.

How the word is built

• pear (single root, from Old English 'peru')

Words that sound like pear

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

• pair: Two matching or associated things considered together as a set.