| / English Dictionary |
OAR
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
An implement used to propel or steer a boat
Classified under:
Nouns denoting man-made objects
Hypernyms ("oar" is a kind of...):
implement (instrumentation (a piece of equipment or tool) used to effect an end)
Meronyms (parts of "oar"):
blade; vane (flat surface that rotates and pushes against air or water)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "oar"):
boat paddle; paddle (a short light oar used without an oarlock to propel a canoe or small boat)
scull (each of a pair of short oars that are used by a single oarsman)
scull (a long oar that is mounted at the stern of a boat and moved left and right to propel the boat forward)
sweep; sweep oar (a long oar used in an open boat)
Context examples:
There were many things to be brought up from the beach and stored in the outhouse—as oars, nets, sails, cordage, spars, lobster-pots, bags of ballast, and the like; and though there was abundance of assistance rendered, there being not a pair of working hands on all that shore but would have laboured hard for Mr. Peggotty, and been well paid in being asked to do it, yet she persisted, all day long, in toiling under weights that she was quite unequal to, and fagging to and fro on all sorts of unnecessary errands.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
One instant he was astride a broncho and flying through the fairy-colored Painted Desert country; the next instant he was gazing down through shimmering heat into the whited sepulchre of Death Valley, or pulling an oar on a freezing ocean where great ice islands towered and glistened in the sun.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Having grown tired, apparently, of the task, she relinquished the oar to me.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
Terlake fell short, crashed in among the oars, and bounded off into the sea.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I was steering, while he and Redruth, two fresh men, were at the oars.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
I hired men to row and took an oar myself, for I had always experienced relief from mental torment in bodily exercise.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
Feeling that she had not mended matters much, Amy took the offered third of a seat, shook her hair over her face, and accepted an oar.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
I can hear men's voices calling, near and far, and the roll and creak of oars in the rowlocks.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
I was at incredible pains in cutting down some of the largest timber-trees, for oars and masts, wherein I was, however, much assisted by his majesty’s ship-carpenters, who helped me in smoothing them, after I had done the rough work.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
A dark-blue oar crossed with a cherry-pink one above his mantel-piece spoke of the old Oxonian and Leander man, while the foils and boxing-gloves above and below them were the tools of a man who had won supremacy with each.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
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