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''sire'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260127004310-00-⌔

sire - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

sire (plural sires)

🖼️ ➺ 🖼️ ➺

  • A lord, master, or other person in authority, most commonly used vocatively: formerly in speaking to elders and superiors, later only when addressing a sovereign.
  • A male animal that has fathered a particular offspring (especially used of domestic animals and/or in biological research).
  • (obsolete) A father; the head of a family; the husband.
    • ✤ He but a Duke, would haue his Sonne a King,/And raiſe his iſſue like a louing Sire.1
    • ✤ Sometimes, also, he reproached himself, for abandoning those abodes where his father had dwelt. “Who knows,” said he to himself, “whether the shades of the departed are allowed to pursue, every where, the objects of their affection? Perhaps it is only permitted them to wander about the spot where their ashes repose! Perhaps in this moment does the spirit of my sire regret the absence of his son, while distance prevents my hearing his voice, exerted to recall me.[”]2
    • ✤ The concession of the King, who, be it also remembered, is a Bourbon, under such circumstances, is one of a suspicious character. Those who remember how faithlessly his father behaved in 1821, under precisely similar circumstances, to his subjects, cannot help entertaining the apprehensions that the son, like the sire, is playing fast and loose with his people, and that he will turn on them when the Austrians come to his relief.3
  • (obsolete) A creator; a maker; an author; an originator.
    • ✤ Most musical of mourners, weep again!/Lament anew, Urania!—He died,/Who was the sire of an immortal strain, […]4
  • (fantasy) The vampire who turned another person.
    • ✤ There is a toxin in a vampire’s fangs that will infect its victim when the sire drinks deeply and fully of their blood.5
    • ✤ Ever since Antonio’s escape from his sire in 1942, he had never been tempted to return to the vampire fold.6
    • ✤ “She is my sire. I cannot defy her as long as she is more powerful than me.”7
    • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:sire.

Verb

sire (third-person singular simple present sires, present participle siring, simple past and past participle sired)

  • (transitive, of a male) To father; to beget.
    • ✤ In these travels, my father sired thirteen children in all, four boys and nine girls.8
  • (transitive, fantasy) To turn (another person) into a vampire.
    • ✤ Synonyms: turn, vampirize
    • ✤ “Do you think they were wannabes, then? Groupies who found a willing vamp to sire them?”9
    • ✤ He wondered if she regretted siring him. Or marrying him.10
    • ✤ I’d never sired another vampire before and I was at a loss of what to do with the rats.11
    • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:sire.

Etymology

From Middle English sire, from Old French sire, the nominative singular of seignor; from Latin senior, from senex. Doublet of seigneur, seignior, senhor, senior, señor, senyor, signore, and sir. Cognate with French monsieur.

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /saɪə(ɹ)/
  • Rhymes: -aɪə(ɹ)
  • Audio (UK): 🔊

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. c. 1591–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii], page 154, column 1: ↩

  2. 1807, [Germaine] de Staël Holstein, translated by D[ennis] Lawler, “[Book I. Oswald.] Chapter I.”, in Corinna; or, Italy. […], volume I, London: […] Corri, […]; and sold by Colburn, […], and Mackenzie, […], →OCLC, pages 5–6: ↩

  3. 1848 February 12, “The Italian Question”, in The Cambridge Independent Press, Huntingdon, Bedford, & Peterborough Gazette, volume XLI, number 1,843, →OCLC, page [2], column 7: ↩

  4. 1821, Percy B[ysshe] Shelley, Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, […], Pisa, Italy: […] Didot; reprinted London: Noel Douglas […], 1927, →OCLC, stanza IV, page 8: ↩

  5. 2010, Michelle Rowen, Bitten & Smitten ‎, page 24: ↩

  6. 2011, Nancy Holder, The Damned ‎, page 7: ↩

  7. 2016, May Freighter, Russian Roulette ‎, page 291: ↩

  8. 1994, Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, London: Abacus, published 2010, page 6: ↩

  9. 2008, Yasmine Galenorn, Darkling ‎, page 34: ↩

  10. 2009, Michelle Rowen, Stakes & Stilettos ‎, page 53: ↩

  11. 2014, J. C. Diem, Death Conquers ‎, page 33: ↩

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