''boor'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

↩ 🔳 🔳 🔳

---

Primary

⁀➴

''boor'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20250825221051-00-⌔

boor - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

boor (plural boors)

• A peasant.
  • ✤ Not swear it, now I am a gentleman? Let boors and franklins say it, I’ll swear it.¹
  • ✤ For all the rich array and goodly port and countenance of Corinius, he seemed but a very boor beside the Lord Brandoch Daha, and dearly did each hate the other.²
• A Boer, white South African of Dutch or Huguenot descent.
• A yokel, country bumpkin.
• An uncultured person; a vulgarian.
  • ✤ Synonym: yahoo
  • ✤ I question if any man ever saw his absent friend more clearly than did Shakespeare his Falstaff, for instance, or Scott his Balfour of Burleigh. But does it, therefore, follow that either of these great writers would, when hungry, have summoned up before him a clearer picture of his approaching dinner, than does the equally hungry or very much hungrier boor? This I doubt; and on the same principle I doubt if the said boor would see his dinner more clearly than a wolf, bear, or tiger would theirs when in quest of it.³

Etymology

Borrowed from Dutch boer (“peasant”). Doublet of bauer, Boer, and bower (“peasant, farmer”).

For the meaning development from Proto-Indo-European ﹡bʰuH-, compare with other derived from this term Russian обыва́тель (obyvátelʹ, “the average man/citizen, the man in the street, philistine, resident, inhabitant”), Polish bydło (“cattle, rabble”) (whence Russian бы́дло (býdlo, “rabble, uncultured or stupid people, sheeple”)).

Compare typologically with pagan (see more).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation)
  • (without the pour–poor merger) IPA: /bʊə/
    • Audio: 🔊
  • (pour–poor merger, rare) IPA: /bɔː/
    • Audio: 🔊
• (General American) enPR: bo͝or, IPA: /bʊɹ/
  • (pour–poor merger) IPA: /boɹ/
  • Audio (US): 🔊
• (Scotland, Northern Ireland) IPA: /bʉːɹ/
• (Ireland) IPA: /buːɹ/
• Rhymes: -ʊə(ɹ)
• Homophones: Boer (one pronunciation); boar (pour–poor merger), bore (pour–poor merger), Bohr (pour–poor merger)

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene ii], line 155: ↩

2. 1922, E[ric] R[ücker] Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros: A Romance, London: Jonathan Cape […], →OCLC, page 30: ↩

3. 1905, Edmund Selous, The Bird Watcher in the Shetlands, p. 107${}^{[1]}$: ↩

Link to original

Secondary

• • •

---