cair

cair verb: to go. Also the alternative form of caer.

Verb

cair (third-person singular simple present cairs, present participle cairing, simple past and past participle caired)

(intransitive, obsolete) To go.
(obsolete, transitive) To carry.
(dialectal, transitive) To toss backwards and forwards; mix up; overhandle; stir about.

Proper noun capitalized: CAIR

CAIR

(US, abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of Clean Air Interstate Rule.
(US, abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Noun capitalized: CAIR

CAIR (uncountable)

(Australia, abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of confidential aviation incident reporting.

Also used as

cair is also the alternative form of caer.

Forms of cair

Verb
third-person singular present	cairs
present participle	cairing
past participle	caired
past	caired
Noun
plural	cairs

Origin of cair

From Middle English cairen, kayren, from Old Norse keyra (“to whip, lash, fling, toss, prick on, drive”), from Proto-Germanic *kaurijaną (“to turn, sweep”). Cognate with Icelandic keyra (“to run, drive, urge”), Swedish köra (“to drive, go, run”), Danish køre (“to drive”), Norwegian Bokmål kjøre (“to drive”), Norwegian Nynorsk køyra (“to drive”), Old English ċierran (“to turn, change, go, come”). More at char.

Questions about cair

What does cair mean?: Cair means to go.
What part of speech is cair?: Cair can be a verb, a proper noun or a noun.
What is the past tense of cair?: The past tense of cair is caired.

Words near cair in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: cair (page history and authors); CAIR (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

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