Definitions

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

  • transitive verb To adorn or attire.
  • noun Attire.
  • noun A headband or headdress.
  • noun A covering for a wheel, usually made of rubber reinforced with cords of nylon, fiberglass, or other material and filled with compressed air.
  • noun A hoop of metal or rubber fitted around a wheel.
  • intransitive verb To lose energy or strength; grow weary.
  • intransitive verb To grow bored or impatient.
  • intransitive verb To diminish the energy or strength; fatigue.
  • intransitive verb To exhaust the interest or patience of.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To become weary, fatigued, or jaded; have the strength or the patience reduced or exhausted.
  • To make weary, weaken, or exhaust by exertion; fatigue; weary: used with reference to physical effect from either physical or mental strain.
  • To exhaust the attention or the patience of, as with dullness or tediousness; satiate, sicken, or cause repugnance in, as by excessive supply or continuance; glut.
  • Synonyms Tire, Fatigue, Weary, Jade. These words are primarily physical, and are in the order of strength. One may become tired simply by standing still, or fatigued by a little over-exertion. Fatigue suggests something of exhanstion or inability to continue exertion : as, fatigued with running. Weary implies protracted exertion or strain gradually wearing out one's strength. Jade implies the repetition of the same sort of exertion: as, a horse will become jaded sooner by driving on a dead level than if he occasionally has a hill to climb. All these words have a figurative application to the mind corresponding to their physical meaning. See fatigue, n., and wearisome.
  • noun A continuous band of metal or other substance placed around a wheel to form the tread.
  • To adorn; attire; dress. See attire.
  • To prepare or equip for; make ready; setup.
  • noun A bitter drink or liquor.
  • noun A head-dress. See tiara.
  • noun The feeling of being tired; a sensation of physical or mental fatigue.
  • To draw; pull; drag.
  • To pull apart or to pieces; rend and devour; prey upon.
  • To engage in pulling or tearing or rending; raven; prey: used especially in falconry of hawks pouncing upon their prey, and in analogous figurative applications.
  • Hence To be earnestly engaged; dwell; dote; gloat.
  • noun Attire; dress.
  • noun Furniture; apparatus; machinery.
  • noun See tier, 2.
  • noun A train or series.
  • noun A row; rank; course; tier; especially, a row of guns; a battery.
  • noun A stroke; hit.
  • To put a tire upon; furnish with tires: as, to tire a wheel or a wagon. Also tyre.

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

  • transitive verb obsolete To adorn; to attire; to dress.
  • intransitive verb obsolete To seize, pull, and tear prey, as a hawk does.
  • intransitive verb obsolete To seize, rend, or tear something as prey; to be fixed upon, or engaged with, anything.
  • noun Archaic Attire; apparel.
  • noun A covering for the head; a headdress.
  • noun A child's apron, covering the breast and having no sleeves; a pinafore; a tier.
  • noun obsolete Furniture; apparatus; equipment.
  • noun A ring, hoop or band, as of rubber or metal, on the circumference of the wheel of a vehicle, to impart strength and receive the wear. In Britain, spelled tyre.
  • intransitive verb To become weary; to be fatigued; to have the strength fail; to have the patience exhausted.
  • transitive verb To exhaust the strength of, as by toil or labor; to exhaust the patience of; to wear out (one's interest, attention, or the like); to weary; to fatigue; to jade.
  • transitive verb to weary or fatigue to exhaustion; to harass.
  • noun obsolete A tier, row, or rank. See tier.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb obsolete To seize, pull, and tear prey, as a hawk does.
  • verb obsolete To seize, rend, or tear something as prey; to be fixed upon, or engaged with, anything.
  • verb intransitive To become sleepy or weary.
  • verb transitive To make sleepy or weary.
  • verb intransitive To become bored or impatient (with)
  • verb transitive To bore
  • noun obsolete Accoutrements, accessories.
  • noun obsolete Dress, clothes, attire.

Etymologies

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

[Middle English tiren, short for attiren, to attire; see attire.]

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

[Middle English, iron rim of a wheel, probably from tir, attire, short for atire, from attiren, to attire; see attire.]

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

[Middle English tiren, from Old English tēorian, tyrian; see deu- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

French tirer ("to draw or pull"), akin to English tear ("to rend").

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English tiren, tirien, teorien, from Old English tȳrian, tēorian ("to fail, cease, become weary, be tired, exhausted; tire, weary, exhaust"), from Proto-Germanic *tiuzōnan (“to cease”), from Proto-Indo-European *deus-, *dēwǝ- (“to fail, be behind, lag”). Compare Ancient Greek δεύομαι (deýomai, "to lack"), Sanskrit  (doṣa, "crime, fault, vice, deficiency").

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English tire ("equipment") aphetic form of attire

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word tire.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • TIRE - (noun) - A tall monument.

    Usage: "Lord willin' and the creek don't rise, I sure do hope to see that Eiffel Tire in Paris sometime."

    April 8, 2008