Word.ws English Dictionary

reared

UK/ɹɪəd//ɹɪɹd/

reared is the simple past and past participle of rear.

Meaning of rear

Verb

rear (third-person singular simple present rears, present participle rearing, simple past and past participle reared)

  1. (transitive) To bring up to maturity, as offspring; to educate; to instruct; to foster.
    • He wants a father to protect his youth, and rear him up to virtue.1694, Thomas Southerne, Isabella: Or The Fatal Marriage
  2. (transitive) To breed and raise.
    • The family has been rearing cattle for 200 years.
  3. (intransitive) To rise up on the hind legs.
    • The horse was shocked, and thus reared.
    Synonyms:
    prance
  4. (intransitive, usually) To get angry.
  5. (intransitive) To rise high above, tower above.
    • By my side reared a solid stone wall, and beneath was simply the room we stood in, for the space below the stairway was not enclosed.1923, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], “(please specify the page)”, in The Eyes of Max Carrados, London: Grant Richards, →OCLC
  6. (literary, transitive) To raise physically or metaphorically; to lift up; to cause to rise, to elevate.
    • Poverty reared its ugly head. (appeared, started, began to have an effect)

See all 22 meanings of rear

Phrases with reared

Words that rhyme with reared

18 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about reared

What is reared the simple past and past participle of?
Reared is the simple past and past participle of rear.
How do you pronounce reared?
Reared is pronounced /ɹɪɹd/ (US).

Words near reared in the dictionary

  1. Rearden
  2. Reardens
  3. Reardon
  4. Reardons
  5. reards
  6. reared
  7. reared back
  8. reared one's head
  9. reared one's ugly head
  10. reared up
  11. rearend

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: reared (page history and authors); rear (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.

Last updated:

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

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