tar

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Pa told me all I had to do was to use a scouring brick, and it would come off, and I used the brick, and it took the skin off, and the tar is there yet, and say, does my lip look very bad The grocery man told him it was the worst looking lip he ever saw, but he could cure it by rubbing a little cayenne pepper in the tar.

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Definitions (42)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (8)

  1. noun A dark, oily, viscous material, consisting mainly of hydrocarbons, produced by the destructive distillation of organic substances such as wood, coal, or peat.
  2. noun Coal tar.
  3. noun A solid residue of tobacco smoke containing byproducts of combustion.

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Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (3)

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This word has been looked up 133 times.

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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

turpentine ·  tallow ·  sulphur ·  grease ·  wax ·  paraffin ·  glue ·  charcoal ·  soap ·  resin ·  lime ·  tobacco

Used in the same contextWord Family

tar:   tarred
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (7)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. Middle English, from Old English teru; see deru- in Indo-European roots.
  2. Possibly short for tarpaulin.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (5)

  1. Also tarr, tare, Portuguese tara, from Malayalam tāram, a copper coin.
  2. from Middle English tar, taar, tarre, ter, teer, terre, from Anglo-Saxon teoro, teoru (teorw-), teru, also tyrwa = Middle Dutch terre, teere, teer, Dutch teer = Middle Low German tere, Low German teer, tar = German dial. (Hessian) zehr, German teer, theer (from Low German) = Icelandic tjara = Danish tjære = Swedish tjära, tar; cf. Icelandic tyri, tyrfi (also tyru-trē, tyrvidhr, tyrvi-trē, a resinous fir-tree), Lithuanian darwa, derwa, resinous wood, particularly of the fir-tree, Lettish darwa, tar; a remote derivative of tree: see tree.
  3. from Middle English terren (= Dutch teren = Middle Low German teren = German theeren = Swedish tjära = Danish tjære), tar, from terre, ter, tar: see tar, n.
  4. Early modern English also tarr, tarre; from Middle English terren, a later form of terien, teryen, tarien, tarʒen, whence English tarry, the fuller form of the word: see tarry. Cf. tire.
  5. Abbr. of tarpaulin, 2.
 

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/tɑr/
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