Weir

How to spell weir

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce weir

What does weir mean?

1. nounA low barrier or dam built across a river to control its flow or raise the water level.

Weir in a sentence

• The river tumbled over the stone weir below the old mill.

• Engineers inspected the weir after the flood to check for damage.

Where does weir come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from the Old English 'wer', meaning a dam, an enclosure, or a barrier built across flowing water to trap fish or raise the level of a stream. It is related to the Old English verb 'werian', meaning 'to defend, guard, or dam up', the same family of words that gives us 'wear' in the sense of warding off and the older 'garrison' idea of defence. The trapping of fish was the earliest practical use: a low barrier forced water through a gap where eels or salmon could be caught. Over time the engineering sense took over, and a weir came to mean any low overflow dam used to control or measure the flow of a river. The spelling keeps the older 'ei' vowel pattern, which is why it looks unusual today even though it simply sounds like 'ear'; the rare 'ei' ordering, rather than the expected 'ie', is the main reason fluent writers hesitate over it.

How the word is built

• weir (a single Old English root meaning a fence or dam in a river; no prefix or suffix)

Words that sound like weir

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

• we're: A contraction of 'we are', used to state what the speaker and at least one other person currently are or are doing.