Word.ws English Dictionary

indear

indear is the archaic form of endear.

Meaning of endear

Verb

endear (third-person singular simple present endears, present participle endearing, simple past and past participle endeared)

  1. (obsolete) To make (something) more precious or valuable.
  2. (obsolete) To make (something) more expensive; to increase the cost of.
  3. (obsolete) To stress (something) as important; to exaggerate.
    • Salvianus Massiliensis[…]saith, that amongst French-men, to lie and forsweare is no vice but a manner of speach. He that would endeare [translating encherir] this Testimonie, might say, it is now rather deemed a vertue among them.1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 18, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC
  4. To make (someone) dear or precious.
    • By giving candy to the children the man tried to endear himself to them.

Forms of indear

third-person singular presentindears
present participleindearing
past participleindeared
pastindeared

Words formed from indear

Questions about indear

What is indear the archaic form of?
Indear is the archaic form of endear.

Words near indear in the dictionary

  1. indazols
  2. INDB
  3. INDC
  4. INDCs
  5. IndE
  6. indear
  7. indeared
  8. indearing
  9. indearment
  10. indears
  11. indeavor

Source and license

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