Word.ws English Dictionary

tare

UK/tɛə//tɛ(ə)ɹ/

tare noun: a vetch, or the seed of a vetch (genus Vicia, esp. Vicia sativa). Also the simple past of tear.

Noun (1)

tare (plural tares)

  1. (rare) A vetch, or the seed of a vetch (genus Vicia, esp. Vicia sativa).
  2. Any of the tufted grasses of the genus Lolium; darnel.
  3. (figuratively, rare) A damaging weed growing in fields of grain.
    • But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.Matthew 13:25 (KJV)
    • I saw as I thought an uncle and guardian who has led a sober, industrious and Christian life and finds himself obliged to look on the tares of folly in his own close kin.1985, John Fowles, A Maggot

Noun (2)

tare (countable and uncountable, plural tares)

  1. The empty weight of a container; unladen weight.
    • What is the neat weight of 4 hogsheads of tobacco, each weighing 10cwt. 3qrs. 10lb. gross; — tare 100lb. per hdd.?1824, Stephen Pike, The Teachers' Assistant: Or a System of Practical Arithmetic, page 97

Verb

tare (third-person singular simple present tares, present participle taring, simple past and past participle tared)

  1. To take into account the weight of the container, wrapping etc. in weighting merchandise.
    • he is […] to tare such number of bales as may be deemed necessary to settle the net weight for duty.1886, Records of the History, Laws, Regulations, and Statistics of the Tobacco Trade of the United Kingdom, page 86
    • Without question, I think, the exploit of "Jubilee" No. 45737 Atlas [...] was the finest [...], for the train was made up to eleven bogies taring the maximum of 350 tons for an engine of this class, notwithstanding which 7 min. was gained on schedule.1959 December, Cecil J. Allen, “Locomotive Running Past and Present”, in Trains Illustrated, page 610
  2. To set a zero value on an instrument (usually a balance) that discounts the starting point.
    • Spectrometers, for example, must be zeroed before each reading; balances must be tared before each weighing.2003, Dany Spencer Adams, Lab Math, CSHL Press, p. 63
    Synonyms:
    zero

Noun (3)

IPA/ˈtɑːɹeɪ/

tare (uncountable)

  1. Any of various dipping sauces served with Japanese food, typically based on soy sauce.

Noun (4) capitalized: Tare

Tare

  1. (World War II era, joint US/RAF) radiotelephony clear-code word for the letter T.
    Synonyms:
    Tango

Also used as

tare is also the simple past of tear.

tare is also the alternative form of tara.

tare meaning in Arabic and Indonesian

tare in Arabic

the empty weight of a container
وَزْن فَارِغ wazn fāriḡ

tare in Indonesian

the empty weight of a container
tara

Synonyms of tare

Forms of tare

Noun
pluraltares
Verb
third-person singular presenttares
present participletaring
past participletared
pasttared

Origin of tare

From Middle English tare (“vetch”), from Old English *taru, from Proto-West Germanic *taru.

Borrowed from Middle French tare, from Italian tara, from Arabic طَرْحَة (ṭarḥa, “that which is thrown away”), a derivative of طَرَحَ (ṭaraḥa, “to throw (away)”).

Borrowed from Japanese 垂(た)れ (tare, “sauce, gravy”).

Words formed from tare

Words that rhyme with tare

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about tare

What does tare mean?
Tare means a vetch, or the seed of a vetch (genus Vicia, esp. Vicia sativa).
What is tare in Arabic?
Tare in Arabic is وَزْن فَارِغ (wazn fāriḡ). See Tare meaning in Arabic.
What part of speech is tare?
Tare can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce tare?
Tare is pronounced /tɛə/ (UK).
What is the plural of tare?
The plural of tare is tares.

Words near tare in the dictionary

  1. tardying
  2. tardyon
  3. tardyonic
  4. tardyons
  5. Tardys
  6. tare
  7. Tarece
  8. Tarectec
  9. tared
  10. Taree
  11. Taree South

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tare (page history and authors); Tare (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-tare.ogg, en-au-tare.ogg.

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