moor

Noun (1)

moor (plural moors)

1. An extensive waste covered with patches of heath, and having a poor, light (and usually acidic) soil, but sometimes marshy, and abounding in peat; a heath. (Compare bog, peatland, marsh, swamp, fen.)
   • A cold, biting wind blew across the moor, and the travellers hastened their step.
   • In her girlish age, she kept sheep on the moor.
2. A game preserve consisting of moorland.

Verb

moor (third-person singular simple present moors, present participle mooring, simple past and past participle moored)

1. (intransitive) To cast anchor or become fastened.
   • The vessel moored in the stream.
2. (transitive) To fix or secure (e.g. a vessel) in a particular place by casting anchor, or by fastening with ropes, cables or chains or the like.
   • They moored the boat to the wharf.
   • His thought is tied, the curving prow
     Of motion moored to rock;
     And minutes burst upon a brow
     Insentient to shock.1941, Theodore Roethke, “Death Piece”, in Open House, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A[braham] Knopf, →OCLC; republished in The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, London: Faber and Faber […], 1968, →OCLC...
3. (transitive) To secure or fix firmly.

Noun (2) capitalized: Moor

UK/mɔː/US/mʊɹ/

Moor (plural Moors)

1. (historical) A member of an ancient Amazigh people from Mauretania.
2. (historical) A member of an Islamic people of Arab or Amazigh origin ruling Spain and parts of North Africa from the 8th to the 15th centuries.
   • [King of] Moro[cco]. Ye Moores and valiant men of Barbary,
     How can ye ſuffer theſe indignities?c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC...
3. (archaic) A Muslim or a person from the Middle East or Africa.
4. (dated) A person of mixed Arab and Amazigh ancestry inhabiting the Mediterranean coastline of northwest Africa.
5. A person of an ethnic group speaking the Hassaniya Arabic language, mainly inhabiting Western Sahara, Mauritania, and parts of neighbouring countries (Morocco, Mali, Senegal etc.).

Proper noun capitalized: Moor

UK/mɔː/US/mʊɹ/

Moor (plural Moors)

1. A surname from Irish.
2. An English surname transferred from the given name.