Rear

How to spell rear

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce rear

What does rear mean?

1. nounThe back part of something, or the position behind.
2. adjectiveSituated at the back of something.
3. verbTo care for and bring up a child or young animal until it is grown.
4. verbOf a horse or other animal, to rise up on its hind legs.

Rear in a sentence

• noun

  The cyclist fitted a red light to the rear of the bike.

• adjective

  She loaded the shopping through the rear door of the house.

• verb

  The couple chose to rear their children in the countryside.

• verb

  The startled horse began to rear as the lorry passed.

• noun

  Extra seats are stored at the rear of the hall.

• adjective

  The rear tyres of the truck were badly worn.

Where does rear come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This single spelling actually hides two separate words that happen to look identical. The verb meaning 'to bring up' or 'to lift' comes from Old English raeran, which literally meant 'to cause to rise' and was the causative partner of risan, the ancestor of modern 'rise'; that is why a horse that suddenly rises onto its hind legs is said to rear. The noun and adjective meaning 'the back part' have a completely different journey: they entered English in the late Middle Ages from Old French rere, itself from the Latin retro, meaning 'backward' or 'behind', the same root that gives us 'retro' and 'retreat'. Military English helped fix the 'back' sense, since the rear was the part of an army furthest from the enemy. Over time both words settled on the same four letters, so a parent can rear a child while a car has a rear window without any shared origin. The plain, irregular spelling reflects the older Germanic word, while the Latin sense simply borrowed its look.

How the word is built

• Two distinct sources collapsed into one spelling: rear (back) from rere (behind) and rear (to raise) from Old English raeran (to lift up)