Pore

How to spell pore

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce pore

What does pore mean?

1. nounA tiny opening in the skin or another surface through which liquid or gas can pass.
2. verbTo read or study something with close, sustained attention (usually 'pore over').

Pore in a sentence

• noun

  A clogged pore can lead to a small blemish on the skin.

• verb

  Accountants often pore over the figures for hours before signing off.

• noun

  Each pore on the leaf lets the plant exchange gas with the air.

• verb

  She likes to pore over old maps whenever she plans a trip.

Where does pore come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word arrived in English in the late 1300s from the Old French pore, which itself came from Latin porus, a borrowing of the Greek poros meaning 'a passage, channel, or way through'. In the original Greek sense it described any narrow opening through which something could pass, and that idea carried straight into the anatomical meaning of a tiny opening in the skin. The same poros root survives in scientific words such as 'porous' (full of tiny holes) and 'osmosis', which describes passage through a membrane. The verb sense, as in to pore over a document, has a separate and uncertain history and may come from an Old English word for gazing intently; the two senses simply ended up spelled alike. The trickiest part for writers is not the spelling itself but the trio of sound-alikes, since pore, pour, and poor are all pronounced the same in most accents.

How the word is built

• pore (single root; from Greek poros: a passage or opening)