Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To make weary by being dull, repetitive, or tedious.
  • noun One that is wearingly dull, repetitive, or tedious.
  • intransitive verb To make a hole in or through, with or as if with a drill.
  • intransitive verb To form (a tunnel, for example) by drilling, digging, or burrowing.
  • intransitive verb To make a hole in or through something with or as if with a drill.
  • intransitive verb To proceed or advance steadily or laboriously.
  • noun A hole or passage made by or as if by use of a drill.
  • noun A hollow, usually cylindrical chamber or barrel, as of a firearm.
  • noun The interior diameter of a hole, tube, or cylinder.
  • noun The caliber of a firearm.
  • noun A drilling tool.
  • noun A high, often dangerous wave caused by the surge of a flood tide upstream in a narrowing estuary or by colliding tidal currents.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To pierce or perforate with a rotatory cutting instrument; make a circular hole in by turning an auger, gimlet, drill, or anything that will produce the same effect: as, to bore a plank or a cannon; to bore the ground for water, or with a stick.
  • To form or produce by rotatory perforation: as, to bore a hole or a well.
  • To penetrate, make, or gain as if by boring; push or drive through or into by any penetrating action: as, to bore a plank, or a hole in a plank, with a rifle-ball.
  • To befool; trick; overreach.
  • To pierce or penetrate, as a gimlet or similar instrument; make a hole or holes: as, the auger bores well.
  • To sink a bore-hole, as in searching for water, coal, etc.
  • To be suited for piercing with an auger or other boring-tool: as, wood that bores well or ill.
  • To push forward or through toward a certain point: as, “boring to the west,”
  • In the manège, to thrust the head forward as far as possible: said of a horse.
  • noun Any instrument for making holes by boring or turning, as an auger or gimlet.
  • noun A hollow hand-tool used in nail-making to hold a nail while its head is being formed.
  • noun A hole made by boring, or as if by boring: as, “an auger's bore,” Specifically
  • noun Hence The caliber or internal diameter of a hole or perforation, whether made by boring or not, especially of the cavity of a gun or tube.
  • noun A wound or thrust.
  • To weary by tedious iteration or repetition; tire, especially in conversation, by insufferable dullness; tease; annoy; pester.
  • In racing, to annoy or impede by crowding against or out of the way.
  • noun An abrupt tidal wave which breaks in an estuary, the water then rushing up the channel with great violence and noise.
  • noun Ennui; a fit of ennui or listless disgust or weariness.
  • noun One who suffers from ennui.
  • noun One who or that which bores one, or causes ennui or annoyance; anything which by dullness taxes the patience, or otherwise causes trouble or annoyance; specifically, a dull, tiresome, or uncongenial person who tires or annoys by forcing his company or conversation on others, or who persists in uninteresting talk or undesired attentions.
  • noun Preterit of bear.
  • noun An obsolete spelling of boar.
  • noun A kind of cabbage; borecole.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To make a hole or perforation with, or as with, a boring instrument; to cut a circular hole by the rotary motion of a tool.
  • intransitive verb To be pierced or penetrated by an instrument that cuts as it turns.
  • intransitive verb To push forward in a certain direction with laborious effort.
  • intransitive verb (Man.) To shoot out the nose or toss it in the air; -- said of a horse.
  • transitive verb To perforate or penetrate, as a solid body, by turning an auger, gimlet, drill, or other instrument; to make a round hole in or through; to pierce.
  • transitive verb To form or enlarge by means of a boring instrument or apparatus.
  • transitive verb To make (a passage) by laborious effort, as in boring; ; to force a narrow and difficult passage through.
  • transitive verb To weary by tedious iteration or by dullness; to tire; to trouble; to vex; to annoy; to pester.
  • transitive verb obsolete To befool; to trick.
  • noun A tidal flood which regularly or occasionally rushes into certain rivers of peculiar configuration or location, in one or more waves which present a very abrupt front of considerable height, dangerous to shipping, as at the mouth of the Amazon, in South America, the Hoogly and Indus, in India, and the Tsien-tang, in China.
  • noun Less properly, a very high and rapid tidal flow, when not so abrupt, such as occurs at the Bay of Fundy and in the British Channel.
  • imp. of 1st & 2d bear.
  • noun A hole made by boring; a perforation.
  • noun The internal cylindrical cavity of a gun, cannon, pistol, or other firearm, or of a pipe or tube.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Origin unknown.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English boren, from Old English borian.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English bare, wave, from Old Norse bāra; see bher- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old English borian ("to pierce"). Confer Danish bore, Norwegian bore, Dutch boren, German bohren, Old Norse bora. Cognate with Latin forare ("to bore, to pierce") and Albanian birë ("a hole"). Sense of wearying may come from a figurative use such as "to bore the ears"; confer German drillen.

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Examples

  • To-morrow we go up to Town "pour ce bore," as the good King always said to me; whenever there were tiresome people to present he always said: "Je vous demande pardon de ce _bore_."

    The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 A Selection from her Majesty's correspondence between the years 1837 and 1861 Queen of Great Britain Victoria 1860

  • Another folio, Rochefort's History of the Caribby Islands, was lettered "Davies 'Carriby Islands," because the title bore the statement "Rendered into English by John Davies."

    A Book for All Readers An Aid to the Collection, Use, and Preservation of Books and the Formation of Public and Private Libraries Ainsworth Rand Spofford

  • Because of the heroic size of the bottles, the pictured bottle on the label bore

    Null-ABC H. Beam Piper 1934

  • The Court, after listening to the evidence concerning the sums paid by individual Natives of the tribe, of the total sum paid for the farm, and of the legal reason why the title bore a white man's name, held that however unfortunate was the position of those Natives if their story was true, it could only give judgment in terms of the title deeds.

    Chapter XXIV Solomon Tshekisho 1916

  • Who should presume to doubt its administration by the Prisoner, when the label bore directions in his own characteristic handwriting?

    The Dop Doctor Richard Dehan 1897

  • The ashes were in one of Mom’s old prescription pill bottles—in fact, the label bore a prescription for medicine taken by cancer patients for nausea—and they’d been given to me by Dad.

    Misty Misty May-Treanor With Jill Lieber Steeg 2010

  • The ashes were in one of Mom’s old prescription pill bottles—in fact, the label bore a prescription for medicine taken by cancer patients for nausea—and they’d been given to me by Dad.

    Misty Misty May-Treanor With Jill Lieber Steeg 2010

  • Chateaubriand is getting what you call a bore; and the whole city is mad about a new opera by Boieldieu.

    Vivian Grey Benjamin Disraeli 1842

  • The title bore "People I Have Shared the Gospel With."

    Bisaya Bloggers Brazen Lass 2008

  • They were so huge that the diameter of their bullets was given in "bore," the English equivalent of gauge.

    Black Powder Behemoths 2004

Comments

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  • Iron-tipped battering ram for attacking masonry; also known as a pick.

    August 24, 2008