spoor
English
Etymology
Early 19th century, from Afrikaans spoor, from Dutch spoor (“track”).[1]
Akin to Old English and Old Norse spor (whence Danish spor), and German Spur, all from Proto-Germanic *spurą. Compare spurn.
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /spʊə/, /spɔː/
Audio (Southern England): (file)
- (General American) IPA(key): /spʊɹ/, /spɔɹ/
- (Scotland, Northern Ireland) IPA(key): /spʉːɹ/
- (Ireland) IPA(key): /spuːɹ/
- Rhymes: -ʊə(ɹ)
- Homophone: spore (in some accents)
Noun
spoor (usually uncountable, plural spoors)
- The track, trail, droppings or scent of an animal.
- 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London, New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:
- We all stopped to examine that monstrous spoor. If it were indeed a bird - and what animal could leave such a mark? - its foot was so much larger than an ostrich's that its height upon the same scale must be enormous.
- 1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter VIII, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, (please specify |part=I to III), New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, 1927, →OCLC:
- Even poor Nobs appeared dejected as we quit the compound and set out upon the well-marked spoor of the abductor.
- 1971, William S. Burroughs, The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead, page 10:
- Now he has picked up the spoor of drunken vomit and there is the doll sprawled against a wall, his pants streaked with urine.
- 2016, Joseph Henrich, chapter 5, in The Secret of Our Success […] , Princeton: Princeton University Press, →ISBN:
- From the spoor, skilled trackers can deduce an individual's age, sex, physical condition, speed, and fatigue level, as well as the time of day it passed by.
Translations
Verb
spoor (third-person singular simple present spoors, present participle spooring, simple past and past participle spoored)
- (transitive) To track an animal by following its spoor
References
- ^ “spoor”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
Anagrams
Dutch
Pronunciation
Etymology 1
From Middle Dutch spor, from Old Dutch *spor, from Proto-Germanic *spurą, from Proto-Indo-European *sperH-.
Noun
spoor n (plural sporen, diminutive spoortje n)
Derived terms
Descendants
- Afrikaans: spoor
- Jersey Dutch: spôr
- Negerhollands: spoor
- Petjo: sepoor
- → Caribbean Javanese: sepur
- → Indonesian: sepur (“railway track”)
- → Javanese: ꦱꦼꦥꦸꦂ (sepur)
- → Indonesian: sepur (“train”) (semantic loan)
- → Papiamentu: spor
Etymology 2
From Middle Dutch spore, from Old Dutch *spora, variant of *sporo, from Proto-West Germanic *spurō, from Proto-Germanic *spurô, from Proto-Indo-European *sperH- (“to kick”).
Noun
spoor f (plural sporen, diminutive spoortje n)
Derived terms
Descendants
Middle English
Noun
spoor
- Alternative form of spore
- English terms derived from Middle Dutch
- English terms borrowed from Afrikaans
- English terms derived from Afrikaans
- English terms derived from Dutch
- English terms derived from Proto-Germanic
- English 1-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio links
- Rhymes:English/ʊə(ɹ)
- Rhymes:English/ʊə(ɹ)/1 syllable
- English terms with homophones
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English uncountable nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with quotations
- English verbs
- English transitive verbs
- Dutch terms with IPA pronunciation
- Dutch terms with audio links
- Rhymes:Dutch/oːr
- Dutch terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- Dutch terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *sperH-
- Dutch terms inherited from Middle Dutch
- Dutch terms derived from Middle Dutch
- Dutch terms inherited from Old Dutch
- Dutch terms derived from Old Dutch
- Dutch terms inherited from Proto-Germanic
- Dutch terms derived from Proto-Germanic
- Dutch lemmas
- Dutch nouns
- Dutch nouns with plural in -en
- Dutch neuter nouns
- Dutch terms inherited from Proto-West Germanic
- Dutch terms derived from Proto-West Germanic
- Dutch feminine nouns
- nl:Botany
- nl:Rail transportation
- Middle English lemmas
- Middle English nouns