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• moor
  moor

  noun

  a tract of open, peaty, wasteland, often overgrown with heath, common in high latitudes and altitudes where drainage is poor; heath.
• Moor
  Moor

  noun

  a Muslim of the mixed Berber and Arab people inhabiting NW Africa.

moor

¹ American  

[moor] / mʊər /

noun

1. 

   a tract of open, peaty, wasteland, often overgrown with heath, common in high latitudes and altitudes where drainage is poor; heath.

2. a tract of land preserved for game.

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moor ² American  

[moor] / mʊər /

verb (used with object)

• moors,
  present (3rd person singular)
• moored,
  past participle,  past
• mooring
  present participle

1. to secure (a ship, boat, dirigible, etc.) in a particular place, as by cables and anchors or by lines.

2. to fix firmly; secure.

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verb (used without object)

• moors,
  present (3rd person singular)
• moored,
  past participle,  past
• mooring
  present participle

1. to moor a ship, small boat, etc.

2. to be made secure by cables or the like.

noun

1. the act of mooring.

Moor ³ American  

[moor] / mʊər /

noun

• Moors
  plural

1. a Muslim of the mixed Berber and Arab people inhabiting NW Africa.

2. a member of this group that invaded Spain in the 8th century a.d. and occupied it until 1492.

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moor ¹ British  

/ mɔː, mʊə /

verb

1. to secure (a ship, boat, etc) with cables or ropes

2. (of a ship, boat, etc) to be secured in this way

3. (not in technical usage) a less common word for anchor

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Moor ² British  

/ mʊə, mɔː /

noun

1. a member of a Muslim people of North Africa, of mixed Arab and Berber descent. In the 8th century they were converted to Islam and established power in North Africa and Spain, where they established a civilization (756–1492)

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moor ³ British  

/ mɔː, mʊə /

noun

1. a tract of unenclosed ground, usually having peaty soil covered with heather, coarse grass, bracken, and moss

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• moory
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• Moors
  plural

Participles

• mooring
  present
• moored
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• moor
  simple
• moors
  simple
• have moored
  perfect
• has moored
  perfect
• am mooring
  progressive
• are mooring
  progressive
• is mooring
  progressive
• have been mooring
  perfect progressive
• has been mooring
  perfect progressive

Past

• moored
  simple
• had moored
  perfect
• was mooring
  progressive
• were mooring
  progressive
• had been mooring
  perfect progressive

Future

• will moor
  simple
• will have moored
  perfect
• will be mooring
  progressive
• will have been mooring
  perfect progressive

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Etymology

Origin of moor¹

First recorded before 900; Middle English more, Old English mōr; cognate with Dutch moer, German Moor “marsh”

Origin of moor²

First recorded in 1485–95; earlier more, akin to Old English mǣrels- in mǣrelsrāp “rope for mooring a ship”; see marline

Origin of Moor³

First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English More, from Middle French, variant of Maure, from Latin Maurus, from Greek Maûros, perhaps from Berber

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Explanation

To moor is to tie up a ship, as in to moor the ocean liner to the docks. Or, if you're reading Victorian literature, a moor could be a mossy meet-up spot. This word of many hats can also be a noun — a moor is mossy land covered in bushes and grass. The spooky dogs in Sherlock Holmes's The Hound of the Baskervilles lurk in the moor. With a capital "M," a Moor refers to a person descended from Muslims of northwestern Africa. It's usually used as a verb, though, meaning "to fasten a boat" — probably related to the Old English word mærels, "mooring rope." Say the word in a deep voice and it almost sounds like the foghorn on a ship that's about to moor in the harbor on a foggy night.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

moor Moor Moors moors moored mooring

The proceeds bought a Chicago-area mansion, a private jet and a 12,000-square-foot waterfront home in Naples, Fla., with its own dock to moor his 130-foot yacht, Top Dog.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 4, 2026

"Extra resources come in at that point where something as important as RAF Fylingdales is threatened by wildfire because it's literally in the middle of a moor, it's very vulnerable," she said.

From BBC ● Aug. 20, 2026

"They want to come here and experience the Brontes, the moor, and find their own interpretation of Emily," he said.

From Barron's ● Feb. 28, 2026

He said the wind was "horrendous up on the moor edge".

From BBC ● Feb. 3, 2026

My own black ship I chose to moor alone on the sea side, using a rock for bollard; and climbed a rocky point to get my bearings.

From "The Odyssey" by Homer

"Of course, there's many things we still don't know about these disks," said Attila Moor of Konkoly Observatory, a coauthor of the study.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 7, 2026

Companies have long spent more to protect their most valuable assets while finding cheaper solutions for lesser priorities, de Moor said.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 17, 2026

Apple’s issue two years ago was that it “overpromised and massively underdelivered,” Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, told MarketWatch.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 7, 2026

Trafford has only played 32 top-flight games, but former Clarets boss Scott Parker previously praised his turnaround at Turf Moor before moving to the Etihad.

From BBC ● Aug. 6, 2026

I wrote to Moor House and to Cambridge immediately, to say what I had done: fully explaining also why I had thus acted.

From "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë

The polyamorous community is bigger than many realize, said Amy C. Moors, an assistant professor of psychology at Chapman University who has researched the demographics of polyamorous people and discrimination against such relationships.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 18, 2026

The land, situated on the Somerset Levels and Moors, is one of the few areas in the UK that still holds deep lowland peat - which are waterlogged wetland ecosystems.

From BBC ● Mar. 14, 2026

In Somerset approximately 29 square miles of the Levels and Moors have been flooded.

From BBC ● Feb. 18, 2026

In Spain, fritter-like buñuelos showed up with the Moors, and by some reports, churros were a Chinese idea that was later dragged through molten chocolate by hungry Madrileños or wandering shepherds or both.

From Salon ● Feb. 5, 2026

Someone had once told him that it was from there that the Moors had come, to occupy all of Spain.

From "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho

After growing up in wild isolation on the moors, they published groundbreaking novels under androgynous pseudonyms.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 18, 2026

Management of moors and heaths to "reduce the fuel loads" could help, he said, as well as grazing, but: "The public can do so much because they're all started by people basically."

From BBC ● Aug. 6, 2026

“Wuthering Heights” looks just as the voracious reader imagines it as they tear through the novel: drafty houses, windy moors, color and texture that bound from the screen.

From Salon ● Jun. 10, 2026

In my teens, I discovered the wild moors and ancient halls of “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights.”

From Los Angeles Times ● May 14, 2026

Instead, he determined the companions would travel some distance from the edges of the swamp, keeping to solid ground and following a path half-circling the bog until they reached the moors.

From "The Black Cauldron" by Lloyd Alexander

One of the beefs homeowners have with PWCs—and so called “wake boats”—is that the waves they generate can slam moored boats into docks and erode shorelines.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 10, 2026

On Wednesday a drone struck a US-owned gas vessel moored in an Egyptian port, causing a fire.

From Barron's ● Aug. 1, 2026

Unveiling a plaque, he said: "My parents' canal journeys ended here in 2019, but they moored here for 20 years before that."

From BBC ● Jul. 2, 2026

Three days before the U.S. game in Seattle some 500 fans, most wearing the blue-and-white striped jerseys of Argentina, filed onto a 322-foot cargo barge moored in Elliott Bay to watch their team play Algeria.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 23, 2026

They made no camp and lit no fire, but lay huddled in the boats, moored close together.

From "The Fellowship of the Ring" by J.R.R. Tolkien

After the mooring lines were dropped, passengers and crew heard a faint bang and felt a shudder deep within the airship, which was at that point well more than 100 feet in the air.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2026

A 10,000-square-foot restricted access warehouse to be built at the port will house mooring lines, pedestrian barriers, gangways and repair gear for the US Navy, said a spokeswoman.

From Barron's ● Sep. 16, 2026

The Caspian Pipeline Consortium said the attack had caused significant damage to a mooring point.

From BBC ● Nov. 29, 2025

Analysis of mooring observations and hydrographic data suggest the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation deep water limb in the North Atlantic has weakened.

From Science Daily ● Apr. 19, 2024

Some were going into the front room of the master’s house, while others were untying the canoe from its mooring post.

From "Flying Through Water" by Mamle Wolo

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Related Words

• dock
• tether
• tie up

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