Definitions

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

  • noun Any of several trees of the genus Pyrus in the rose family, having glossy leaves and white flowers, especially P. communis, widely cultivated for its edible fruit.
  • noun The fruit of any of these trees, having gritty, juicy flesh and usually a shape that is spherical at the base and tapering toward the stalk.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The fruit of the pear-tree.
  • noun The tree Pyruts communis.
  • noun A pear-shaped pearl, as for the pendant of an ear-ring. Evelyn, Mundus Muliebris
  • An obsolete form of peer.

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

  • noun (Bot.) The fleshy pome, or fruit, of a rosaceous tree (Pyrus communis), cultivated in many varieties in temperate climates; also, the tree which bears this fruit. See Pear family, below.
  • noun (Bot.), (Zoöl.) A very small beetle (Xyleborus pyri) whose larvæ bore in the twigs of pear trees and cause them to wither.
  • noun (Bot.) a suborder of rosaceous plants (Pomeæ), characterized by the calyx tube becoming fleshy in fruit, and, combined with the ovaries, forming a pome. It includes the apple, pear, quince, service berry, and hawthorn.
  • noun (Physics) a kind of gauge for measuring the exhaustion of an air-pump receiver; -- so called because consisting in part of a pear-shaped glass vessel.
  • noun (Zoöl.) any marine gastropod shell of the genus Pyrula, native of tropical seas; -- so called from the shape.
  • noun (Zoöl.) the larva of a sawfly which is very injurious to the foliage of the pear tree.

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

  • noun An edible fruit produced by the pear tree, similar to an apple but elongated towards the stem.
  • noun A type of fruit tree (Pyrus communis).
  • noun The wood of the pear tree.
  • noun choke pear (a torture device)

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun Old World tree having sweet gritty-textured juicy fruit; widely cultivated in many varieties
  • noun sweet juicy gritty-textured fruit available in many varieties

Etymologies

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

[Middle English pere, from Old English peru, a pear, ultimately from Vulgar Latin *pira, from Latin, pl. of pirum.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old English pere, common North and West Germanic, from Vulgar Latin *pira, originally the plural of Latin pirum but reconstrued as a feminine singular.

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