Word.ws English Dictionary

breare

breare is the obsolete spelling of briar.

Meaning of briar

Noun (1)

briar (plural briars)

  1. Any of many plants with thorny stems growing in dense clusters, such as many in the Rosa, Rubus, and Smilax genera.
    • Youngthes folke now flocken in every where,
      To gather May-buskets and smelling brere1579, Immeritô [pseudonym; Edmund Spenser], “Maye. Ægloga Quinta.”, in The Shepheardes Calender: […], London: […] Hugh Singleton, […], →OCLC
  2. (figuratively) Anything that is sharp or unpleasant to the feelings.
    • ¶ And thou ſonne of man, be not afraid of them, neither be afraid of their wordes, though bryars and thornes be with thee, and thou doeſt dwell among ſcorpions: be not afraid of their words, nor be diſmayed at their lookes, though they be a rebellious houſe.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Ezekiel 2:6

Noun (2)

briar (plural briars)

  1. Tree heath (Erica arborea), a thorny Mediterranean shrub.
  2. A pipe for smoking, made from the roots of that shrub.
    • Then he put the insulted pipe in his pocket, corked himself up with the immense briar, and sneered at Cripps over the top of it.1913, Norman Lindsay, A Curate in Bohemia, Sydney: N.S.W. Bookstall Co., published 1932, page 12

See all 6 meanings of briar

Forms of breare

pluralbreares

Words formed from breare

Questions about breare

What is breare the obsolete spelling of?
Breare is the obsolete spelling of briar.

Words near breare in the dictionary

  1. breamlike
  2. Breamore
  3. breams
  4. Breanna
  5. Breant
  6. breare
  7. Brearley
  8. Brearleys
  9. Brears
  10. Brearses
  11. Brearton

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: breare (page history and authors); briar (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: “breare.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/breare. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.