Word.ws English Dictionary

bearhug

bearhug is the alternative spelling of bear hug.

Meaning of bear hug

Noun

bear hug (plural bear hugs)

  1. Any especially large, tight or enthusiastic hug, usually friendly and especially given by a male.
    • Granddad scooped up the child in a big bear hug.
  2. A hostile takeover effort in which one firm offers to buy the other firm at a share price too high to refuse.
  3. A hold with the arms around the opponent.

Verb

bearhug (third-person singular simple present bearhugs, present participle bearhugging, simple past and past participle bearhugged)

  1. (transitive) To embrace in a bear hug.
    • All around the Giants are signs and symbols of change and progression, from the once-isolated head coach, who was spotted Sunday night triumphantly bearhugging a player, to the acutely boyish quarterback, who stepped to the podium wearing the flattering look of whiskered grunge.2008 January 15, Harvey Araton, “In Big Ways and Small, the Giants Grew Into a Team”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 26 Nov 2022

Forms of bearhug

Noun
pluralbearhugs
Verb
third-person singular presentbearhugs
present participlebearhugging
past participlebearhugged
pastbearhugged

Questions about bearhug

What does bearhug mean?
Bearhug means to embrace in a bear hug.
What is bearhug the alternative spelling of?
Bearhug is the alternative spelling of bear hug.
What part of speech is bearhug?
Bearhug is a verb.
What is the past tense of bearhug?
The past tense of bearhug is bearhugged.

Words near bearhug in the dictionary

  1. bearherds
  2. bearhide
  3. bearhides
  4. bearhound
  5. bearhounds
  6. bearhug
  7. bearhugged
  8. bearhugging
  9. bearhugs
  10. bearhunt
  11. bearhunts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bearhug (page history and authors); bear hug (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.

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