bere

/bɪə/US/bɪɚ/

bere noun: barley, especially four-rowed barley or six-rowed barley.

Noun (1)

bere (uncountable)

(Scotland) Barley, especially four-rowed barley or six-rowed barley.

Noun (2)

bere (plural beres)

(dialectal) A pillowcase; a fabric case or covering as for a pillow; a pillowbere.
- Woven and embroidered coverlets in imitation of tapestry appear as 'a tapestry covering which lieth on my bed' [...] 'a pillow of feathers with a bere' (pillow-case); 'two pillows and the beres to [cover them]'1976, Essex Record Office, Publications
- [...] he'd tossed me an extra pillow in a bere.2014 April 1, Phil Rickman, The Heresy of Dr Dee, Atlantic Books, →ISBN

Forms of bere

alternative form	bear
plural	beres

Origin of bere

From Middle English bere (“barley”), from Old English bere (“barley”), from Proto-West Germanic *barī, from Proto-Germanic *baraz (“barley”). Compare Welsh bara (“bread”), Latin far (“emmer”), Serbo-Croatian бра̏шно/brȁšno (“flour”), Albanian bar (“grass”), Ancient Greek Φήρον (Phḗron, “plant deity”). See also: barley.

See bear (“pillowcase”)

Words formed from bere

beremeal

Phrases with bere

Words that rhyme with bere

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about bere

What does bere mean?: Bere means barley, especially four-rowed barley or six-rowed barley.
What part of speech is bere?: Bere is a noun.
How do you pronounce bere?: Bere is pronounced /bɪə/ (UK).
What is the plural of bere?: The plural of bere is beres.

Words near bere in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: bere (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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-bere.wav.

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