Word.ws English Dictionary

lure

/lʊə/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

British/lɵː/

lure noun: something that tempts or attracts, especially one with a promise of reward or pleasure. Also the alternative form of lur.

lure: something that tempts or attracts, especially one with a promise of reward or pleasure
Image: Raboe001, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

lure (plural lures)

  1. (also, figuratively) Something that tempts or attracts, especially one with a promise of reward or pleasure.
    • How many have with a smile made small account
      Of Beauty and her lures1671, John Milton, “The First Book”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: […] J[ohn] M[acock] for John Starkey […], →OCLC, page 2
  2. An artificial bait attached to a fishing line to attract fish.
    • the inch-at-a-time flutter of a surface lureJuly 1976, Frank Sargent, “High-Speed Bass”, in Field & Stream, page 111
  3. A bunch of feathers attached to a line, used in falconry to recall the hawk.
    • My Faulcon now is ſharpe and paſſing emptie, / And til ſhe ſtoope ſhe muſt not be full gorg'd, / For then ſhe never lookes upon her lure.c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
  4. A velvet smoothing brush.

Verb

lure (third-person singular simple present lures, present participle luring, simple past and past participle lured)

  1. (transitive) To attract by temptation, appeal, or guile.
    • It had been sixteen years since the BBC’s Grace Wyndham Goldie wrote her internal memo about luring him back to make sociological/scientific TV programmes. Now a second note had circulated, from the science department, proposing that he should present the Corporation’s next educative megaseries.2012, Kate Bassett, “Mid-Seventies Onwards: Operatic beginnings and The Body in Question”, in In Two Minds: A Biography of Jonathan Miller, London: Oberon Books Ltd, →ISBN, page 219
    • Professor is what you become after teaching for twenty to thirty years. Research Professor is what you then want to become, so you can finally stop worrying about students and do the research that lured you into academia in the first place!2014, Michel Clasquin-Johnson, What is the difference between a research professor and a professor?
    Synonyms:
    entice
  2. (transitive) To attract fish with a lure.
  3. (transitive) To recall a hawk with a lure.

Also used as

lure is also the alternative form of lur.

lure meaning in Hindi, Telugu, Punjabi and Thai

lure in Hindi

tempting or attractive object
चारा cārā, प्रलोभन pralobhan

lure in Telugu

tempting or attractive object
గాలము gālamu
artificial fishing bait
ఎర era
to entice
ఊరించు ūriñcu

lure in Punjabi

ਲੁਭਾਓ, ਲਾਲਚ ਦੇਣ ਲਈ

lure in Thai

to entice
ล่อ lɔ̂ɔ

Examples of lure in a sentence

  • I lured the cat into her carrier by throwing a couple of treats in there.
  • Hansel and Gretel were lured by the witch’s insidious gingerbread house.
  • The angler lured a smaller fish into reach with the appendage on its head.

All 40 example sentences with lure

Synonyms of lure

Forms of lure

Noun
plurallures
Verb
third-person singular presentlures
present participleluring
past participlelured
pastlured

Past tense of lure: lured

Plural of lure: lures

Origin of lure

From Anglo-Norman lure, from Old French loirre (Modern French leurre), from Frankish *lōþr, from Proto-Germanic *lōþr-, perhaps ultimately related to *laþō (“invitation, calling”), or from Proto-Indo-European *leh₂- (“to hide”). Compare English allure, also from Old French. Probably related to German Luder (“bait”).

Borrowed from Icelandic lúðr.

Words formed from lure

Words that rhyme with lure

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about lure

What does lure mean?
Lure means something that tempts or attracts, especially one with a promise of reward or pleasure.
What is lure in Hindi?
Lure in Hindi is चारा (cārā), प्रलोभन (pralobhan). See Lure meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is lure?
Lure can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce lure?
Lure is pronounced /lʊə/.
What is the plural of lure?
The plural of lure is lures.

Words near lure in the dictionary

  1. lurdane
  2. lurdanes
  3. lurdans
  4. lurden
  5. lurdens
  6. lure
  7. lured
  8. lureful
  9. lurement
  10. Luren
  11. lurer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lure (page history and authors); lure (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-lure.ogg.

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