lear

¹

[leer]

noun

Scot. and North England.

1. learning; instruction; lesson.

Lear

²

[leer]

noun

1. Edward, 1812–88, English writer of humorous verse and landscape painter.

2. (italics),  King Lear.

Lear

/ lɪə /

noun

1. Edward. 1812–88, English humorist and painter, noted for his illustrated nonsense poems and limericks

Word History and Origins

Origin of lear¹

1350–1400; late Middle English lere lesson, noun use of lere to teach, Old English lǣran; cognate with Dutch leren, German lehren, Gothic laisjan; akin to lore ¹

Example Sentences

Lear, though “more sinned against than sinning,” recognizes only after it’s too late the error in judgment that led to the devastation from which there can be no return.

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Shakespeare offers what has become the defining portrait of this inconsolable experience in “King Lear.”

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Cradling the lifeless body of his murdered daughter, Lear can do nothing but repeat the word “never” five times, the repetition driving home the irrevocable nature of loss.

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King Lear, bearing the brunt of a storm, looks at what he thinks is a mad beggar and wonders if “unaccommodated man” is no more than “a poor, bare, forked animal.”

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Finally, Mr. Reiner prevailed upon Norman Lear—once his boss on “All in the Family,” then the head honcho of Embassy Pictures—to provide backing.

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