Word.ws English Dictionary

lire

lire noun: flesh, brawn, or muscle; the fleshy part of a person or animal in contradistinction to the bone and skin. Also the plural of lira.

Noun (1)

lire (plural lires)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland, UK, dialectal) Flesh, brawn, or muscle; the fleshy part of a person or animal in contradistinction to the bone and skin.
  2. (Scotland, UK, dialectal) The fleshy part of a roast capon, etc. as distinguished from a limb or joint.

Noun (2)

lire (plural lires)

  1. (Scotland, UK, dialectal) The cheek.
  2. (Scotland, UK, dialectal) Face; appearance of the face or skin; complexion; hue.

Noun (3)

lire (plural lires)

  1. (Orkney, Scotland, Shetland, UK, dialectal) The Manx shearwater (bird).

Also used as

lire is also the plural of lira.

Forms of lire

plurallires

Origin of lire

From Middle English lire, lyre, from Old English līra (“any fleshy part of the body, muscle, calf of the leg”), from Proto-Germanic *ligwizô, *lihwizô (“thigh, groin”), from Proto-Indo-European *lekʷs-, *lewks- (“groin”). Cognate with Dutch lies (“groin”), Swedish lår (“thigh”).

From Middle English lire, lyre, from Old Norse hlýr (“cheeks”, plural). Compare Middle English lere, from Old English hlēor (“cheek, countenance, complexion”). More at leer.

From Old Norse líri. Cognate with Norwegian lira.

Words that rhyme with lire

Questions about lire

What does lire mean?
Lire means flesh, brawn, or muscle; the fleshy part of a person or animal in contradistinction to the bone and skin.
What part of speech is lire?
Lire is a noun.
What is the plural of lire?
The plural of lire is lires.

Words near lire in the dictionary

  1. lirated
  2. liration
  3. lirations
  4. lirazza
  5. lirazzas
  6. lire
  7. lirella
  8. lirellae
  9. lirellaeform
  10. lirellate
  11. lirelliform

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lire (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: “lire.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lire. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.