Word.ws English Dictionary

hearsome

hearsome adjective: ready to hear; obedient; compliant; dutiful; devout.

Adjective

hearsome (comparative more hearsome, superlative most hearsome)

  1. (rare) Ready to hear; obedient; compliant; dutiful; devout.
    • "[…] Thou dost like a hearsome wife, thou dost ever say."1863, Henry Mayhew, The boyhood of Martin Luther
    • In that he mis-bade (ruled) his monks in many things and the monks meant it lovingly to him and bade him that he should hold (treat) them rightly and love them and they would be faithful to him and hearsome (obedient).1880, Joseph Angus, The handbook of specimens of English literature

Forms of hearsome

comparativemore hearsome
superlativemost hearsome
alternative form (obsolete)hearsum

Origin of hearsome

From Middle English hersum, ihersum, from Old English hīersum, ġehīersum (“obedient”), from Proto-West Germanic *hauʀisam, *gahauʀisam, equivalent to hear + -some. Cognate with West Frisian hearsum (“obedient”), Dutch gehoorzaam (“obedient, dutiful, law-abiding”), Low German horzaam, hursam (“obedient”), German gehorsam (“obedient, submissive, subdued”), Swedish hörsam (“obedient”).

Words formed from hearsome

Questions about hearsome

What does hearsome mean?
Hearsome means ready to hear; obedient; compliant; dutiful; devout.
What part of speech is hearsome?
Hearsome is an adjective.

Words near hearsome in the dictionary

  1. hearsed
  2. hearseless
  3. hearselike
  4. hearses
  5. hearsing
  6. hearsome
  7. hearsomeness
  8. hearst
  9. Hearstian
  10. Hearstling
  11. Hearstlings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hearsome (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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