Word.ws English Dictionary

mar

/mɑː(ɹ)/US/mɑɹ/

mar verb: to spoil; to ruin; to scathe; to damage. Also the alternative form of mere.

Verb

mar (third-person singular simple present mars, present participle marring, simple past and past participle marred)

  1. (transitive) To spoil; to ruin; to scathe; to damage.
    • […] and putteth ether many a good mā by ignorance in ieopardy of his life, or marreth good medicines to the great diſhoneſtie both of the Phiſician and of Goddes worthy creatures, the herbes and medecines:1551, William Turner, “Prologe”, in A new Herball, etc., folio Aiiii
    • Prospero: […]huſh, and be mute / Or elſe our ſpell is mar'd.1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published...

Noun (1)

mar (plural mars)

  1. A blemish.
    • For concealing deep mars, some manufacturers offer putty sticks in colors that match their panels.1980, Robert M. Jones, editor, Walls and Ceilings, Time-Life Books, →ISBN, page 68

Proper noun (1) capitalized: MAR

MAR

  1. Alternative letter-case form of Mar (“March”).

Noun (2) capitalized: MAR

MAR (uncountable)

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of modified aspect ratio.

Adjective capitalized: MAR

MAR (not comparable)

  1. (abbreviation) Abbreviation of maroon (an eye color).
  2. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of missing at random.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Mar

Mar

  1. (abbreviation) Abbreviation of March.

Proper noun (3) capitalized: Mar

Mar

  1. An earldom in the Scottish peerage.

Noun (3) capitalized: Mar

Mar (plural Mars)

  1. A title of respect in Syriac, given to all saints and also used before the Christian names of bishops.

Also used as

mar is also the alternative form of mere.

mar is also the alternative form of mayor and mair.

mar meaning in Tamil, Bengali, Telugu and Malayalam

mar in Tamil

மார்

mar in Bengali

মার

mar in Telugu

మార్

mar in Malayalam

മാർ
More languagesFewer languages
mar in Kannada
ಮಾರ್
mar in Gujarati
માર
mar in Odia
ମାର୍, ମାର
mar in Nepali
मार्
mar in Arabic
أَفْسَدَ ʔafsada

Examples of mar in a sentence

  • Ire, envy, and despair / Marred all his borrowed visage, and betrayed / Him counterfeit.1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books, London: Printed [by Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker...
  • Mother, tho' wiſe your ſelf, my Counſel weigh; / 'Tis much unſafe my Sire to disobey; / Not only you provoke him to your Coſt, / But Mirth is marr'd, and the good Chear is loſt.1700, [John] Dryden, “Homer’s Ilias”, in Fables Ancient and Modern; […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, book I, page 218:
  • And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.1826, Adam Clarke, The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments: The Text Printed from the Most Correct Copies of the Present...
  • Sin defiles the soul; it mars its beauty, impairs its health and vigor.1856, Jabez Burns, “The Heralds of Mercy”, in Cyclopedia of Sermons: Containing Sketches of Sermons on the Parables and Miracles of Christ...

All 40 example sentences with mar

Forms of mar

Verb
third-person singular presentmars
present participlemarring
past participlemarred
pastmarred
alternative form (obsolete)marre
Noun
pluralmars
pluralMars
alternative formMor
alternative formMart

Past tense of mar: marred

Origin of mar

Inherited from Middle English merren, from Old English mierran (“to mar, disturb, confuse; scatter, squander, waste; upset, hinder, obstruct; err”), from Proto-Germanic *marzijaną (“to disturb, hinder”), from Proto-Indo-European *mers- (“to annoy, disturb, neglect, forget, ignore”). Cognate with Scots mer, mar (“to obstruct, impede, spoil, ruin”), Dutch marren (“to push along, delay, hinder”), dialectal German merren (“to entangle”), Icelandic merja (“to bruise, crush”), Gothic 𐌼𐌰𐍂𐌶𐌾𐌰𐌽 (marzjan, “to annoy, bother, disturb, offend”), Lithuanian miršti (“to forget, lose, become oblivious, die”), Armenian մոռանալ (moṙanal, “to forget, fail”), Sanskrit मृष् (mṛṣ, “forget, neglect”).

Variant of mere.

See mayor.

Words formed from mar

Phrases with mar

Words that rhyme with mar

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about mar

What does mar mean?
Mar means to spoil; to ruin; to scathe; to damage.
What is mar in Tamil?
Mar in Tamil is மார். See Mar meaning in Tamil.
How do you use mar in a sentence?
Ire, envy, and despair / Marred all his borrowed visage, and betrayed / Him counterfeit.
What part of speech is mar?
Mar can be a verb, a noun, a proper noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce mar?
Mar is pronounced /mɑː(ɹ)/ (UK).
What is the past tense of mar?
The past tense of mar is marred.

Words near mar in the dictionary

  1. maquis
  2. maquisard
  3. maquisards
  4. Maquoketa
  5. Maqên
  6. mar
  7. Mar Chiquita
  8. Mar del Plata
  9. Mar'ash
  10. mar-
  11. Mar-a-Lago

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mar (page history and authors); MAR (page history and authors); Mar (page history and authors); mar (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); mar (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); mar (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); mar (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); mar (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); mar (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); mar (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); mar (Nepali, 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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-mar.wav.

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