Word.ws English Dictionary

ire

UK/aɪ.ə(ɹ)//aɪ.ɚ/

ire noun: iron.

Noun (1)

ire (uncountable)

  1. (obsolete) Iron.
    • […] 'Tell I'm rud as the smith makes the pieces of ire; […]1806, Richard Polwhele, The Language, Literature, and Literary Characters of Cornwall: with Illustrations from Devonshire, page 25
    • A ire thing, moore smart by haff, / That zeed var off 's za theene 's a laff, / An' zum zes edden' 'xac'ly saff, / Stan's in th' place ee did.1842, George Philip Rigney Pulman, Rustic Sketches; being poems on angling ... in the dialect of East Devon, page 55

Noun (2)

ire (uncountable)

  1. Great anger; wrath; keen resentment.
    • to raise the ire of someone
    • She lik'd not his desire; Fain would be free but dreadeth parents irea. 1587, Philippe Sidnei [i.e., Philip Sidney], “(please specify the folio)”, in [Fulke Greville; Matthew Gwinne; John Florio], editors, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia [The New Arcadia], London...
    Synonyms:
    apoplexy, fury, rage, wrath

Verb

ire (third-person singular simple present ires, present participle iring, simple past and past participle ired)

  1. (rare, transitive) To anger, to irritate.
    • It doesn't tire a man to put down a carpet so much as it ires him.1880, Gleason's Monthly Companion, page 287
    • I heard enough from the gentleman who has just taken his seat, and from my friend, Dr. Caldwell, to ire me just a little bit.1915, Dr. Duncan Eve of Nashville, Tennessee, USA, in the Southern Medical Journal, volume 4, page 279

Proper noun (1) capitalized: IRE

IRE

  1. (abbreviation) Abbreviation of Ireland (Republic of Ireland).
  2. (abbreviation, historical, initialism) Initialism of Institute of Radio Engineers.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: IrE

IrE

  1. (abbreviation) Abbreviation of Irish English.
    • Quite a number of EE urban and rural dialects, educated English speech, IrE, and ScotE cannot be ruled out.1990, Jerold A. Edmondson, Crawford Feagin, Peter Mühlhäusler, Development and diversity: language variation across time and space
    • Like ScotE, IrE has certain word stress patterns that differ from RP (in -ise verbs, for example), but there are few categorical differences and a great deal of variability.2013, Gunnel Melchers, Philip Shaw, World Englishes, →ISBN, page 77

ire meaning in Persian and Thai

ire in Persian

great anger
غضب ġazab

ire in Thai

great anger
ความโกรธ kwaam gròht, ความโมโห kwaam mohŏh, โทสะ too-sà
to anger, fret
ทำให้โกรธ tam hâi gròht, ทำให้โกรธเคือง tam hâi gròht keuang

Examples of ire in a sentence

  • If I digg'd up thy forefathers graves, And hung their rotten coffins up in chains, It could not slake mine ire, nor ease my heart.c. 1591–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories...
  • Or Neptune's ire, or Juno's, that so long Perplex'd the Greek and Cytherea's son.1667, John Milton, “Book IX”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert...
  • For this th' avenging Pow'r employs his darts; / And empties all his quiver in our hearts; / Thus will perſiſt, relentleſs in his ire, / Till the fair ſlave be render'd to her ſire: [...]a. 1701 (date written), John Dryden, “The First Book of Homer’s Ilias”, in The Miscellaneous Works of John Dryden, […], volume IV, London...
  • Twelve-foot snow drifts still cover windows.¶ Buffalo’s slow, haphazard plowing and response has also drawn the ire of county leaders.2022 December 27, Brianna Sacks, “Buffalo blizzard fuels racial and class divides in polarized city”, in The Washington Post, archived from...

All 24 example sentences with ire

Synonyms of ire

Forms of ire

third-person singular presentires
present participleiring
past participleired
pastired

Origin of ire

From Middle English ire, yre, from Old English īre, ȳre, īr, ȳr, shortened form of īren (“iron”). More at iron.

From Middle English ire, from Old French ire (“ire”), from Latin īra (“wrath, rage”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁eysh₂- (“to fall upon, act sharply”) (compare Old English ofost (“haste, zeal”), Old Norse eisa (“to race forward”), Ancient Greek ἱερός (hierós, “supernatural, holy”), οἶστρος (oîstros, “frenzy; gadfly”), Avestan 𐬀𐬈𐬯𐬨𐬀 (aesma, “anger”), Sanskrit इष् f (iṣ, “refreshment, strength”)). Compare also Middle English irre, erre (“anger, wrath”), from Old English yrre, ierre, eorre (“anger, wrath”).

Words formed from ire

Phrases with ire

Words that rhyme with ire

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about ire

What does ire mean?
Ire means iron.
What is ire in Persian?
Ire in Persian is غضب (ġazab). See Ire meaning in Persian.
How do you use ire in a sentence?
If I digg'd up thy forefathers graves, And hung their rotten coffins up in chains, It could not slake mine ire, nor ease my heart.
What part of speech is ire?
Ire can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce ire?
Ire is pronounced /aɪ.ɚ/ (US).

Words near ire in the dictionary

  1. IRCops
  2. IRCs
  3. IrDA
  4. IRDC
  5. Irdinmanhan
  6. ire
  7. IRE unit
  8. IRE units
  9. Ire.
  10. ired
  11. Iredell

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ire (page history and authors); IRE (page history and authors); IrE (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-ire.ogg.

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