sire
Americannoun
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sires
plural
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the male parent of a quadruped.
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a respectful term of address, now used only to a male sovereign.
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Archaic.
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a father or forefather.
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a person of importance or in a position of authority, as a lord.
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verb (used with object)
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sires,
present (3rd person singular)
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sired,
past participle, past
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siring
present participle
noun
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a male parent, esp of a horse or other domestic animal
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a respectful term of address, now used only in addressing a male monarch
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obsolete a man of high rank
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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siresimple
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siressimple
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have siredperfect
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has siredperfect
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am siringprogressive
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are siringprogressive
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is siringprogressive
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have been siringperfect progressive
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has been siringperfect progressive
Past
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siredsimple
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had siredperfect
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was siringprogressive
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were siringprogressive
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had been siringperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of sire
1175–1225; Middle English < Old French (nominative singular) < Vulgar Latin *seior, for Latin senior senior (compare French monsieur originally, my lord, with sieur < *seiōr-, oblique stem of *seior )
Explanation
A sire is an animal's father. A newborn foal might look very much like his sire, with a white stripe on his brown face. Every once in a while, the word sire is used for a human — your dad is your sire — but it's much more common to find this word describing an animal's male parent. It's also a verb, meaning "to father," as in "My prize pig sires the cutest piglets." In the old days, you'd also use sire to directly address a nobleman or a king. It comes from the Latin word senior, "elder."
Vocabulary lists containing sire
The Princess Bride
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Tolkien Reading Day, List 3
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The Sea of Monsters
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Three years on, the Purosangue remains an astonishing presence on any street, a provocation, an outrage, a moral panic—indeed, sire, very like a Ferrari.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 18, 2026
Green and gold colours of owner JP McManus look more likely to succeed elsewhere, although there is a breeding positive - Chantry House's sire Yeats was also dad to 2022 National winner Noble Yeats.
From BBC ● Apr. 3, 2025
The tendency of one sire to spread a harmful mutation among its descendants even has a name, “the popular sire effect.”
From Slate ● Oct. 9, 2023
A corner stall in the stallion barn still bears Secretariat’s name and that of his sire, Bold Ruler, among those of other elites who have inhabited the space.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 10, 2023
For the sire of their race was the great horse of Eorl that knew the speech of Men.
From "The Two Towers" by J. R. R. Tolkien
The mare was sired by Northern Dancer, the first Canadian-bred horse to win the Kentucky Derby in 1964 who went on to become one of the sport’s greatest sires.
From Washington Times ● Jun. 6, 2023
He will join Dubawi, Frankel and Into Mischief among the most valuable sires in horse racing.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 6, 2022
Rickard said this compared to recently frozen semen from 19 sires used to inseminate 1,048 ewes, of which 618 were successfully impregnated.
From The Guardian ● Mar. 18, 2019
At the Plant and Animal Genome meeting in San Diego, California, in January, Oatley presented the results of his efforts to transplant sperm-producing stem cells into his surrogate pig sires.
From Nature ● Mar. 13, 2019
Whatever their sires or their grandsires might have been back in Westeros before their exile, the men of the Golden Company were sellswords now, and no sellsword could be trusted.
From "A Dance with Dragons" by George R. R. Martin
As the play opens Bach is anguished by the illness of one of his many children—he sired 20, although only half made it to adulthood—and alarmed by his failing eyesight.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 24, 2026
Mouse pups sired by dysbiotic fathers showed significantly lower birth weights and an increased rate of postnatal mortality.
From Science Daily ● May 1, 2024
Both babies were sired by Kiburi, a 19-year-old silverback brought to the zoo from Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands as part of a conservation breeding program to help preserve the critically endangered gorilla subspecies.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 25, 2024
Before coming to the zoo, Otto lived in a safari park in Denmark and he sired six calves during his time at Colchester.
From BBC ● Mar. 24, 2024
If this sounds silly, bear in mind that before the development of modern embryological studies, people had no solid evidence that babies are always sired by a single father rather than by many.
From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari
Paramount Global has created numerous spin-offs of its main cable channels, with Nickelodeon siring five programming offspring, Nick Jr., Nick at Nite, TeenNick, Nicktoons and Nick Music.
From Reuters ● Sep. 14, 2023
A Dutch court banned a man Friday from donating any more of his sperm after his donations led to the siring of 550 to 600 children.
From Washington Times ● Apr. 28, 2023
There would likely still have been a sectarian power struggle over a weakened state, siring a civil war and brewing regional tensions.
From Slate ● Mar. 27, 2018
When Tom swaps Rachel for Anna as queen of Westchester, siring infant Evie but a year later, such rancor becomes even more understandable given the protagonist’s battle with infertility.
From Salon ● Oct. 14, 2016
But Louie, the instant her uncle stopped, broke into a siring of questions, shrill and breathless, her face quite white, her eyes glittering.
From The History of David Grieve by Mrs. Humphry Ward
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