Word.ws English Dictionary

ajar

UK/əˈd͡ʒɑː//əˈd͡ʒɑɹ/

ajar adverb: slightly turned or opened.

Adverb (1)

ajar (not comparable)

  1. Slightly turned or opened.
    • The door was standing ajar.

Adjective

ajar (comparative more ajar, superlative most ajar)

  1. Slightly turned or opened.
    • The door is ajar.
    • I know—for Death, who comes for me
      From regions of the blest afar,
      Where there is nothing to deceive,
      Hath left his iron gate ajar, […]1829, Edgar Allan Poe, “Tamerlane”, in Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems

Verb (1)

ajar (third-person singular simple present ajars, present participle ajarring, simple past and past participle ajarred)

  1. (intransitive, rare, transitive, perhaps nonstandard) To turn or open slightly; to become ajar or to cause to become ajar; to be or to hang ajar.
    • A plainclothes detective knocked on a slightly ajarred door.1970, John H. Evans, Mercer County law journal, volume 10
    • Yes, and the door also lops off stairs leading to a landing on whose landing is another door on whose hinges much of this story ajars, if it hasn't jarred too much already.1977, Bill Reed, Dogod

Adverb (2)

ajar (not comparable)

  1. (archaic) Out of harmony.
  2. Being at variance or in contradiction to something.
    • There is a sort of unexpressed concern, / A kind of shock that sets one's heart ajar […].1819, Lord Byron, Don Juan, II.14

Verb (2)

ajar (third-person singular simple present ajars, present participle ajarring, simple past and past participle ajarred)

  1. (intransitive, rare, perhaps nonstandard) To show variance or contradiction with something; to be or cause to be askew.
    • It clean deafened the two of us, and set all the crockery ware ajarring; and when the neighbours heard it they came running into the street to see who was getting hurt.1907, The English Illustrated Magazine, volume 36

Noun capitalized: Ajar

Ajar (plural Ajars)

  1. Synonym of Adjaran.
    • The Ajars are Muslim Georgians and have their own autonomous republic within Georgia, but Georgians insist that there are no important distinctions between Ajars and Georgians […]1995, Timothy J. Colton, Robert C. Tucker, Patterns in Post-Soviet Leadership
    • During World War II Stalin drew up a plan for the deportation of the Muslim Ajars, but the plan was postponed and finally abandoned at his death in 1953.1998, James Minahan, Miniature Empires: A Historical Dictionary of the Newly Independent States
    Synonyms:
    Adjaran

ajar meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

ajar in Tamil

சிறிது திறந்து, செவிக்கு அருவருப்பாக

ajar in Urdu

ajar
ادھ کھلا adḥ khulā

ajar in Bengali

সামান্য খোলা

ajar in Malayalam

അല്പം തുറന്ന, ഒരു ചരിവായി, മൂടി അടയ്ക്കാതെ
More languagesFewer languages
ajar in Kannada
ನಸುತೆರೆದ
ajar in Persian
نیمهلا nime-lâ, نیمهباز nime-bâz

Examples of ajar in a sentence

  • Curiously, when I arrived home, the front door was standing ajar.
  • He noticed that the window was ajar, and right away he knew in his gut that a rip-off had probably occurred.
  • The door itself, wrought of a swarthy bronze all overgreened by time, stood slightly ajar.

All 14 example sentences with ajar

Synonyms of ajar

Forms of ajar

Adverb
alternative Scotlandachar
Adjective
comparativemore ajar
superlativemost ajar
Verb
third-person singular presentajars
present participleajarring
past participleajarred
pastajarred
Noun
pluralAjars

Origin of ajar

From Middle English ajar, on char (“on [the] turn”), from on (“on”) + char (“turn, occasion”), from Old English ċierr, cyrr (“turn”), from ċierran (“to turn, convert”), equivalent to a- + char. Akin to Scots char, chare (“to turn, cause to turn”), Dutch akerre, kier (“ajar”), German kehren (“to turn”). See char.

From a- (“in, at”) + jar (“discord, disagreement”).

From Georgian აჭარლები (ač̣arlebi).

Words that rhyme with ajar

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about ajar

What does ajar mean?
Ajar means slightly turned or opened.
What is ajar in Tamil?
Ajar in Tamil is சிறிது திறந்து, செவிக்கு அருவருப்பாக. See Ajar meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is ajar?
Ajar can be an adverb, an adjective, a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce ajar?
Ajar is pronounced /əˈd͡ʒɑː/ (UK).

Words near ajar in the dictionary

  1. Ajanta
  2. Ajantha
  3. Ajantian
  4. ajapsandal
  5. ajapsandali
  6. ajar
  7. Ajara
  8. ajaraca
  9. ajaracas
  10. ajari
  11. Ajaria

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ajar (page history and authors); Ajar (page history and authors); ajar (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ادھ کھلا (Urdu) (page history and authors); ajar (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ajar (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ajar (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-ajar.ogg, en-au-ajar.ogg.

Cite this entry: “ajar.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ajar. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.