different between bear vs sneak

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /b??(?)/, /b??(?)/, enPR: bâr
• (General American) IPA^(key): /b???/, enPR: bâr
• (Indian English) IPA^(key): /?bi??(r)/, /b??(r)/
• Homophone: bare
• Rhymes: -??(?)
• (Southern US, colloquial) IPA^(key): /b??/
• Homophone: bar (Southern US, colloquial)

Etymology 1

From Middle English bere, from Old English bera, from Proto-West Germanic *ber?, from Proto-Germanic *berô (compare West Frisian bear, Dutch beer, German Bär, Danish bjørn).

Noun

bear (plural bears)

2. A large omnivorous mammal, related to the dog and raccoon, having shaggy hair, a very small tail, and flat feet; a member of family Ursidae.
3. (figuratively) A rough, unmannerly, uncouth person. [1579]
4. (finance) An investor who sells commodities, securities, or futures in anticipation of a fall in prices. [1744]

   Antonym: bull

5. (slang, US) A state policeman (short for smokey bear). [1970s]
   • 1976 June, CB Magazine, Communications Publication Corporation, Oklahoma City, June 40/3:

     ‘The bear's pulling somebody off there at 74,’ reported someone else.

6. (slang) A large, hairy man, especially one who is homosexual. [1990]
   • 1990, "Bears, gay men subculture materials" (publication title, Human Sexuality Collection, Collection Level Periodical Record):
   • 2004, Richard Goldstein, Why I'm Not a Bear, in The Advocate, number 913, 27 April 2004, page 72:

     I have everything it takes to be a bear: broad shoulders, full beard, semibald pate, and lots of body hair. But I don't want to be a fetish.

   • 2006, Simon LeVay, Sharon McBride Valente, Human sexuality:

     There are numerous social organizations for bears in most parts of the United States. Lesbians don't have such prominent sexual subcultures as gay men, although, as just mentioned, some lesbians are into BDSM practices.

   Antonym: twink

7. (engineering) A portable punching machine.
8. (nautical) A block covered with coarse matting, used to scour the deck.
9. (cartomancy) The fifteenth Lenormand card.
10. (colloquial, US) Something difficult or tiresome; a burden or chore.

Synonyms

• (large omnivorous mammal): see Thesaurus:bear
• (rough, uncouth person): see Thesaurus:troublemaker
• (police officer): see Thesaurus:police officer

Derived terms

Descendants

• ? Irish: béar

Translations

See bear/translations § Noun.

Verb

bear (third-person singular simple present bears, present participle bearing, simple past and past participle beared)

1. (finance, transitive) To endeavour to depress the price of, or prices in.

Adjective

bear (not comparable)

1. (finance, investments) Characterized by declining prices in securities markets or by belief that the prices will fall.

Translations

See also

• ursine
• Appendix:Animals
• Appendix:English collective nouns

References

• Donald A. Ringe, From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic (2006), Linguistic history of English, vol. 1, Oxford: Oxford University Press ?ISBN

Further reading

• bear on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Etymology 2

From Middle English beren (“carry, bring forth”), from Old English beran (“to carry, bear, bring”), from Proto-West Germanic *beran, from Proto-Germanic *beran?, from Proto-Indo-European *b?éreti, from *b?er- (“to bear, carry”).

Akin to Old High German beran (“carry”), Dutch baren, Norwegian Bokmål bære, Norwegian Nynorsk bera, German gebären, Gothic ???????????????????????? (bairan), Sanskrit ???? (bhárati), Latin ferre, and Ancient Greek ?????? (phérein), Albanian bie (“to bring, to bear”), Russian ????? (brat?, “to take”), Persian ????? (bordan, “to take, to carry”).

Verb

bear (third-person singular simple present bears, present participle bearing, simple past bore or (archaic) bare, past participle borne or (see usage notes) born)

1. (chiefly transitive) To carry or convey, literally or figuratively.
   1. (transitive, of weapons, flags or symbols of rank, office, etc.) To carry upon one's person, especially visibly; to be equipped with.

   2. (transitive, of garments, pieces of jewellery, etc.) To wear. (Can we add an example for this sense?)
   3. (transitive, rarely intransitive, of a woman or female animal) To carry (offspring in the womb), to be pregnant (with).

   4. (transitive) To have or display (a mark or other feature).
      • 1859, Charles Darwin, Origin of Species iv. 88:

        Male stag-beetles often bear wounds from the huge mandibles of other males.

   5. (transitive) To display (a particular heraldic device) on a shield or coat of arms; to be entitled to wear or use (a heraldic device) as a coat of arms. [1400]

   6. (transitive) To present or exhibit (a particular outward appearance); to have (a certain look). [1200]
      • 1930, Essex Chronicle 18 April 9/5:

   7. (transitive) To have (a name, title, or designation). [1225]
      • 2005, Lesley Brown, translator, Plato, Sophist. 234b:

        […] imitations that bear the same name as the things […]

      • 2013, D. Goldberg, Universe in Rearview Mirror iii. 99:

        Heinrich Olbers described the paradox that bears his name in 1823.

   8. (transitive) To possess or enjoy (recognition, renown, a reputation, etc.); to have (a particular price, value, or worth). [1393]

   9. (transitive, of an investment, loan, etc.) To have (interest or a specified rate of interest) stipulated in its terms. [1686]

   10. (transitive, of a person or animal) To have (an appendage, organ, etc.) as part of the body; (of a part of the body) to have (an appendage).

   11. (transitive) To carry or hold in the mind; to experience, entertain, harbour (an idea, feeling, or emotion).
   12. (transitive, rare) To feel and show (respect, reverence, loyalty, etc.) to, towards, or unto a person or thing.

   13. (transitive) To possess inherently (a quality, attribute, power, or capacity); to have and display as an essential characteristic.

   14. (transitive, of a thing) To have (a relation, correspondence, etc.) to something else. [1556]

   15. (transitive) To give (written or oral testimony or evidence); (figurative) to provide or constitute (evidence or proof), give witness.

   16. (transitive) To have (a certain meaning, intent, or effect).

       • Her sentence bore that she should stand a certain time upon the platform.

   17. (reflexive, transitive) To behave or conduct (oneself).
   18. (transitive, rare) To possess and use, to exercise (power or influence); to hold (an office, rank, or position).

       • Every man should bear rule in his own house.

   19. (intransitive, obsolete) To carry a burden or burdens. [1450]
   20. (transitive, obsolete, rare) To take or bring (a person) with oneself; to conduct. [1590]
2. To support, sustain, or endure.
   2. (transitive) To support or sustain; to hold up.

   3. (now transitive outside certain set patterns such as 'bear with'; formerly also intransitive) To endure or withstand (hardship, scrutiny, etc.); to tolerate; to be patient (with).
      • 1700, John Dryden, "Meleager and Atalanta", in: The poetical works, vol. 4, William Pickering, 1852, p. 169:

        I cannot, cannot bear; ’tis past , ’tis done; / Perish this impious , this detested son; […]
   4. (transitive) To sustain, or be answerable for (blame, expense, responsibility, etc.).

      The hirer must bear the cost of any repairs.

      • He shall bear their iniquities.

      • 1753, John Dryden, The Spanish Friar: or, the Double Discovery, Tonson and Draper, p. 64:

        What have you gotten there under your arm, Daughter? somewhat, I hope, that will bear your Charges in your Pilgrimage.

   5. (transitive) To admit or be capable of (a meaning); to suffer or sustain without violence, injury, or change.
      • 1724, Jonathan Swift, Drapier's Letters

        In all criminal cases the most favourable interpretation should be put on words that they can possibly bear.

   6. (transitive) To warrant, justify the need for.

3. To support, keep up, or maintain.
   1. (transitive) To afford, to be something to someone, to supply with something. (Can we add an example for this sense?)
      • 1732–4, Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, Longmans, Green & Co, 1879, bear%20him%20company%20pope&hl=de&pg=PA10#v=onepage&q&f=false p. 10:

        […] admitted to that equal sky, / His faithful dog shall bear him company.

   2. (transitive) To carry on, or maintain; to have. (Can we add an example for this sense?)
      • 1693, John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, § 98:

        […] and he finds the Pleasure, and Credit of bearing a Part in the Conversation, and of having his Reasons sometimes approved and hearken'd to.

4. To press or impinge upon.
   1. (intransitive, usually with on, upon, or against) To push, thrust, press.

      • These men therefore bear hard upon the suspected party.

   2. (intransitive, figuratively) To take effect; to have influence or force; to be relevant.

   3. (intransitive, military, usually with on or upon) Of a weapon, to be aimed at an enemy or other target.
      • 2012, Ronald D. Utt, Ships of Oak, Guns of Iron

        Constitution's gun crews crossed the deck to the already loaded larboard guns as Bainbridge wore the ship around on a larboard tack and recrossed his path in a rare double raking action to bring her guns to bear again on Java's damaged stern.

5. To produce, yield, give birth to.
   1. (transitive) To give birth to (someone or something) (may take the father of the direct object as an indirect object).

   2. (transitive, less commonly intransitive) To produce or yield something, such as fruit or crops.
      • 1688, John Dryden, Britannia Rediviva

        Betwixt two seasons comes th' auspicious air, / This age to blossom, and the next to bear.

6. (intransitive, originally nautical) To be, or head, in a specific direction or azimuth (from somewhere).

7. (transitive, obsolete) To gain or win.
   • 1612, Francis Bacon, Of Seeming Wise

     Some think to bear it by speaking a great word.

   • April 5, 1549, Hugh Latimer, The Fifth Sermon Preached Before King Edward (probably not in original spelling)

     She was […] found not guilty, through bearing of friends and bribing of the judge.

Usage notes

• The past participle of bear is usually borne:
  • He could not have borne that load.
  • She had borne five children.
  • This is not to be borne!
• However, when bear is used in the passive voice to mean "to be given birth to" literally or figuratively (e.g. be created, be the result of), the form used to form all tenses is born:
  • She was born on May 3.
  • Racism is usually born out of a real or feared loss of power to a minority or a real or feared decrease in relative prosperity compared to that of the minority.
  • Born three years earlier, he was the eldest of his siblings.
  • "The idea to create [the Blue Ridge Parkway] was born in the travail of the Great Depression […] ." (Tim Pegram, The Blue Ridge Parkway by Foot: A Park Ranger's Memoir, ?ISBN, 2007, page 1)
• Both spellings have been used in the construction born(e) into the world/family and born(e) to someone (as a child). The borne spellings are more frequent in older and religious writings.
  • He was born(e) to Mr. Smith.
  • She was born(e) into the most powerful family in the city.
  • "[M]y father was borne to a Swedish mother and a Norwegian father, both devout Lutherans." (David Ross, Good Morning Corfu: Living Abroad Against All Odds, ?ISBN, 2009)
• In some colloquial speech, beared can be found for both the simple past and the past participle, although it is usually considered nonstandard and avoided in writing. Similarly, bore may be extended to the past participle; the same provisos apply for this form.

Synonyms

• (to put up with something): brook, endure; See also Thesaurus:tolerate

Derived terms

Translations

References

• bear at OneLook Dictionary Search
• bear in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Etymology 3

Noun

bear (uncountable)

1. Alternative spelling of bere (“barley”).
   • 1800, Tuke, Agric., 119:

     There are several plots of those species of barley called big, which is six-rowed barley; or bear, which is four-rowed, cultivated.

   • 1818, Marshall, Reports Agric., I. 191:

     Bigg or bear, with four grains on the ear, was the kind of barley.

   • 1895, Dixon, Whittingham Vale, 130:

     Two stacks of beare, of xx boules,

   • 1908, Burns Chronicle and Club Directory, page 151:

     […] one wheat stack, one half-stack of corn, and a little hay, all standing in the barnyard; four stacks of bear in the barn, about three bolls of bear lying on the barn floor, two stacks of corn in the barn, […]

   • 1802-1816, Papers on Sutherland Estate Management, published in 1972, Scottish History Society, Publications:

     Your Horses are Getting Pease Straw, and looking very well. The 2 Stacks of Bear formerly mentioned as Put in by Mr Bookless is not fully dressed as yet so that I cannot say at present what Quantity they may Produce .

Etymology 4

Middle English bere (“pillowcase”), of obscure origin, but compare Old English hl?or-bera (“cheek-cover”). Possibly cognate to Low German büre, whence German Bühre, which in turn has been compared to French bure.

Noun

bear (uncountable)

1. (obsolete) A pillowcase; a fabric case or covering as for a pillow.
   • 1742, William Ellis, The London and Country Brewer [...] Fourth Edition, page 36:

     And, according to this, one of my Neighbours made a Bag, like a Pillow-bear, of the ordinary six-penny yard Cloth, and boiled his Hops in it half an Hour; then he took them out, and put in another Bag of the like Quantity of fresh Hops, […]

   • 1850, Samuel Tymms, Wills and Inventories from the Registers of the Commissary of Bury St. Edmunds and the Archdeacon of Sudbury, page 116:

     ij payer of schete, ij pelows wt the berys,

   • 1858, Journal of the Statistical Society of London, page 409:

     1641.—14 yards of femble cloth, 12s. ; 8 yards of linen, 6s. 8d. ; 20 yards of harden, 10s. ; 5 linen sheets, 1l. ; 7 linen pillow bears, 8s. ; 2 femble sheets and a line hard sheet, 10s. ; 3 linen towels, 4s. ; 6 lin curtains and a vallance, 12s. ; […]

   • 1905, Emily Wilder Leavitt, Palmer Groups: John Melvin of Charlestown and Concord, Mass. and His Descendants ; Gathered and Arranged for Mr. Lowell Mason Palmer of New York, page 24:

     I give to my Grand Child Lidea Carpenter the Coverlid that her mother spun and my pillow bear and a pint Cup & my great Pott that belongs to the Pott and Trammels.

   • 1941, Minnie Hite Moody, Long Meadows, page 71:

     […] a man's eyes played him false, sitting him before tables proper with damask and pewter, leading him to fall into beds gracious with small and large feather beds for softness and pillowed luxuriously under pretty checked linen pillow bears.

Anagrams

• Aber, Bare, Baré, Brea, Reba, bare, brae, rabe

Irish

Noun

bear m pl

1. alternative genitive plural of bior (“pointed rod or shaft; spit, spike; point”)

Mutation

Further reading

• "bear" in Foclóir Gaeilge–Béarla, An Gúm, 1977, by Niall Ó Dónaill.

West Frisian

Etymology

From Old Frisian bera, from Proto-West Germanic *ber?, from Proto-Germanic *berô.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /b???r/

Noun

bear c (plural bearen, diminutive bearke)

1. bear

Further reading

• “bear (II)”, in Wurdboek fan de Fryske taal (in Dutch), 2011

English

Etymology

Possibly from Middle English sniken (“to creep, crawl”), from Old English sn?can (“to creep, crawl”), from Proto-West Germanic *sn?kan, from Proto-Germanic *sn?kan? (“to creep, crawl”), which is related to the root of snake. Compare Danish snige (“to sneak”), Swedish snika (“to sneak, hanker after”), Icelandic sníkja (“to sneak, hanker after”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /sni?k/
• Rhymes: -i?k

Noun

sneak (plural sneaks)

1. One who sneaks; one who moves stealthily to acquire an item or information.

2. The act of sneaking
3. A cheat; a con artist.

   Synonyms: con artist, trickster; see also Thesaurus:confidence trickster, Thesaurus:deceiver

4. An informer; a tell-tale.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:informant

5. (obsolete, cricket) A ball bowled so as to roll along the ground; a daisy-cutter
6. (US) A sneaker; a tennis shoe.
   • 2014, Faye McKnight, Goodnight, Bob (page 9)

     We would have been laughed off the street in Philadelphia if we were seen wearing sneaks. In the big city, the young population wore loafers or boots.

7. (American football) A play where the quarterback receives the snap and immediately dives forward.

Translations

Verb

sneak (third-person singular simple present sneaks, present participle sneaking, simple past and past participle sneaked or snuck)

1. (intransitive) To creep or go stealthily; to come or go while trying to avoid detection, as a person who does not wish to be seen.

   Synonym: skulk

2. (transitive) To take something stealthily without permission.

3. (ditransitive) To stealthily bring someone something.

4. (transitive, dated) To hide, especially in a mean or cowardly manner.
   • 1701, William Wake, A rationale upon some texts of Scripture

     [Slander] sneaks its head.

5. (intransitive, informal, with on) To inform an authority of another's misdemeanours.

   Synonyms: grass, snitch, tell tales

Usage notes

• The past and past participle snuck is primarily found in North American English, where it originated in the late 19th century as a dialectal form. It is still regarded as informal by some, but its use appears to be increasing in frequency and acceptability. It is occasionally found in British and Australian/Hiberno-English, too, though regarded as an American form. (See Oxford Dictionaries, The Cambridge Guide to English Usage, Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, Webster's New World College Dictionary.)
• Informally, snook is also often found as the past tense. It is considered nonstandard.
• To sneak (take) something is not the same as to steal something. In this sense, sneak typically implies trying to avoid a supervisor's or guardian's mild displeasure or mild discipline, while steal indicates a more serious action and often the person stealing does not know the owner of the item being stolen.

Derived terms

Translations

Adjective

sneak (not comparable)

1. In advance; before release to the general public.

2. In a stealthy or surreptitious manner.

Derived terms

• sneak attack
• sneak peek
• sneak preview

Anagrams

• Kasen, Keans, Snake, akens, asken, kaens, kenas, nakes, skean, snake

Dutch

Etymology

Borrowed from English sneak

Verb

sneak

1. first-person singular present indicative of sneaken
2. imperative of sneaken