Word.ws English Dictionary

spar

/spɑː/US/spɑɹ/

spar noun: a rafter of a roof.

Noun (1)

spar (plural spars)

  1. A rafter of a roof.
  2. A thick pole or piece of wood.
  3. (obsolete) A bar of wood used to fasten a door.
    • The Prince staid not his aunswere to devize, / But, opening streight the Sparre, forth to him came […].1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto XI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
  4. Any linear object used as a mast, sprit, yard, boom, pole or gaff.
  5. A beam-like structural member that supports ribs in an aircraft wing or other airfoil.

Verb (1)

spar (third-person singular simple present spars, present participle sparring, simple past and past participle sparred)

  1. (dialectal, obsolete) To bolt, bar.
    • The church dores were sparred,
      Fast boltyd and barryd,
      Yet wyth a prety gyn
      I fortuned to come in, […]c. 1503–1512, John Skelton, Ware the Hauke; republished in John Scattergood, editor, John Skelton: The Complete English Poems, 1983, →OCLC, page 64, lines 91–94
  2. (transitive) To supply or equip (a vessel) with spars.

Verb (2)

spar (third-person singular simple present spars, present participle sparring, simple past and past participle sparred)

  1. To fight, especially as practice for martial arts or hand-to-hand combat.
    • After early sparring, Spurs started to take control as the interval approached and twice came close to taking the lead. Terry blocked Rafael van der Vaart's header on the line and the same player saw his cross strike the post after Adebayor was unable to apply a touch.2012 April 15, Phil McNulty, “Tottenham 1-5 Chelsea”, in BBC Sport, archived from the original on 04 Sep 2016
  2. To strike with the feet or spurs, as cocks do.
  3. To contest in words; to wrangle.

Noun (2)

spar (plural spars)

  1. A sparring session; a preliminary fight, as in boxing or cock-fighting.
  2. (Multicultural-London-English) A friend, a mate, a pal.
    • KLASHNEKOFF: I take two glass then pass the spliff to my spars.2002, “No Escape” (track 23), in It's All Happening Now, performed by Lewis Parker (musician), Klashnekoff, and Skriblah Dan Gogh
    • 'Ello clart! How are you doin' spar? Let's have a look at your mobile phone there, that's fuckin' posh, innit?[…]that's fuckin' safe, spar!2003, “Soap Bar”, in The Manifesto, performed by Goldie Looking Chain

Noun (3)

spar (countable and uncountable, plural spars)

  1. Any of various microcrystalline minerals, of light, translucent, or transparent appearance, which are easily cleft.
  2. Any crystal with readily discernible faces.

Phrase capitalized: SPAR

SPAR

  1. (UK, abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of signal passed at red.

Proper noun capitalized: Spar

Spar

  1. A surname.

spar meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

spar in Hindi

स्पार

spar in Tamil

ஸ்பார்

spar in Marathi

स्पार

spar in Urdu

سپار, اسپار
More languagesFewer languages
spar in Bengali
স্পার
spar in Telugu
స్పార్
spar in Malayalam
സ്പാർ
spar in Kannada
ಸ್ಪಾರ್
spar in Punjabi
ਸਪਾਰ
spar in Gujarati
સ્પાર
spar in Odia
ସ୍ପାର, ସ୍ପାର୍
spar in Nepali
स्पार
spar in Persian
شاهتیر šāhtir, دکل dakal

Examples of spar in a sentence

  • Light up your whip and all of your spars.2009 March 17, “Next Hype” (track 3), in All-Star Pars, performed by Tempa T:
  • Trying to explain to my spars how it is over a spliff.2014 September 12, “September 12th”performed by S.Kalibre:

All 24 example sentences with spar

Forms of spar

Noun
pluralspars
Verb
third-person singular presentspars
present participlesparring
past participlesparred
pastsparred

Plural of spar: spars

Origin of spar

From Middle English sparre (“spar, rafter, beam”) (noun), sparren (“to close, bar”) (verb), from Middle Dutch sparre or Middle Low German Sparre, all ultimately from Proto-Germanic *sparrô (“stake, beam”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)par- (“beam, log”). Compare Dutch spar (“balk”), German Sparren (“rafter, spar”), Danish sparre (“spar”), Albanian shparr, shpardh (“kind of oak”). Perhaps also compare spear.

From Middle English sparren (“to dart out; to strike out”), from Old English sperran, spirran, spyrran (“to strike, strike out at, spar”), related to Low German sparre (“a struggling, striving”), German sich sperren (“to struggle, resist, oppose”), Icelandic sperrast (“to kick out at, thrust, struggle”). The slang sense of friend is probably from the phrase sparring partner under the influence of the similar slang words par and star.

From Middle Low German spar, sper (“spar”); or from a backformation of sparstone (“spar”), from Middle English sparston (“gypsum, chalk”), from Old English spærstān (“gypsum”). Related to German Sparkalk (“plaster”), Old English spæren (“of plaster, of mortar”).

Words formed from spar

Phrases with spar

Words that rhyme with spar

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about spar

What does spar mean?
Spar means a rafter of a roof.
What is spar in Hindi?
Spar in Hindi is स्पार. See Spar meaning in Hindi.
How do you use spar in a sentence?
Light up your whip and all of your spars.
What part of speech is spar?
Spar can be a noun, a verb, a phrase or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce spar?
Spar is pronounced /spɑː/ (UK).
What is the plural of spar?
The plural of spar is spars.

Words near spar in the dictionary

  1. spanwise
  2. spanworm
  3. spanworms
  4. Spanyard
  5. Spapen
  6. spar
  7. spar buoy
  8. spar buoys
  9. spar deck
  10. spar decks
  11. spar torpedo

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spar (page history and authors); SPAR (page history and authors); Spar (page history and authors); spar (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); spar (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); spar (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); spar (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); spar (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); spar (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); spar (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); spar (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); spar (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); spar (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); spar (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); spar (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-spar.wav.

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