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Idioms about wear

    wear thin,
    1. to diminish; weaken: My patience is wearing thin.
    2. to become less appealing, interesting, tolerable, etc.: childish antics that soon wore thin.

Origin of wear

First recorded before 900; (verb) Middle English weren “to have (clothes) on the body, waste, damage, suffer waste or damage,” Old English werian; cognate with Old Norse verja, Gothic wasjan “to clothe”; (noun) late Middle English were “act of carrying on the body,” derivative of the verb; akin to Latin vestis clothing (see vest)

OTHER WORDS FROM wear

wear·er, nounre·wear, verb, re·wore, re·worn, re·wear·ing.
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

British Dictionary definitions for wear (1 of 3)

wear1
/ (wɛə) /

verb wears, wearing, wore or worn
noun

Derived forms of wear

wearer, noun

Word Origin for wear

Old English werian; related to Old High German werien, Old Norse verja, Gothic vasjan

British Dictionary definitions for wear (2 of 3)

wear2
/ (wɛə) /

verb wears, wearing, wore or worn
nautical to tack by gybing instead of by going through stays

Word Origin for wear

C17: from earlier weare, of unknown origin

British Dictionary definitions for wear (3 of 3)

Wear
/ (wɪə) /

noun
a river in NE England, rising in NW Durham and flowing southeast then northeast to the North Sea at Sunderland. Length: 105 km (65 miles)
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Idioms and Phrases with wear

wear

The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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