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hear

verbinterjectiontop 1 000 in film dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈhɪə//
  • Canada//ˈhɪɚ//
  • Canada/[ˈhɪɹ̩]/
  • Australia//ˈhiː//

To perceive sounds through the ear.

verb

  1. 1

    To perceive sounds through the ear.

    I was deaf, but now I can hear.

  2. 2

    To perceive (a sound, or something producing a sound) with the ear, to recognize (something) in an auditory way.

    I could hear them quarreling upstairs, but didn’t really listen to their argument.

    Mr. Cooke at once began a tirade against the residents of Asquith for permitting a sandy and generally disgraceful condition of the roads. So roundly did he vituperate the inn management in particular, and with such a loud flow of words, that I trembled lest he should be heard on the veranda.

  3. 3

    To exercise this faculty intentionally; to listen to.

    Agayne there was dissencion amonge the iewes for these sayinges, and many of them sayd: He hath the devyll, and is madde: why heare ye hym?

    It had been his intention to go to Wimbledon, but as he himself said: “Why be blooming well frizzled when you can hear all the results over the wireless. And results are all that concern me. […]”

  4. 4

    To listen favourably to; to grant (a request etc.).

    Eventually the king chose to hear her entreaties.

  5. 5

    To receive information about; to come to learn of.

    Adam, soon as he heard / The fatal Trespass don by Eve, amaz'd, / Astonied stood and Blank […]

  6. 6

    To be contacted by.

    I haven't heard from you in a while; how have you been?

    When I don't hear from you, My days feel long and lonely.

    They're ten hours overdue. Have you heard from any of them since they left Nineveh?

    She left and I never heard from her again.

  7. 7

    To listen to (a person, case) in a court of law; to try.

    Your case will be heard at the end of the month.

  8. 8

    informalTo sympathize with; to understand the feelings or opinion of.

    You're tired of all the ads on TV? I hear ya.

  9. 9

    To study under.

    SPHÆRUS was of Bosphorus, he first heard Zeno, then Cleanthes, and having made a sufficient progresse in learning, went to Alexandria to Ptolomy Philopater […]

    Ammonius, the teacher of both Simplicius and Philoponus, tells us how Julian gave a ruling […] in favor of Maximus, who had heard Iamblichus, and followed him and Porphyry (in An. Pr. 31,15–22).

    Charmadas, never actually Head of School but a prominent Academic who had himself heard Carneades, was prepared to teach Plato’s Gorgias […]

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂eḱ- Proto-Indo-European *h₂ew- Proto-Indo-European *-s Proto-Indo-European *h₂ṓws Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *h₂ḱh₂owsyéti Proto-Germanic *hauzijaną Proto-West Germanic *hauʀijan Old English hīeran Middle English heren English hear From Middle English har, heoren, her, here, heren, from Old English hēran, hīeran, hīran, hȳran (“to hear”), from Proto-West Germanic *hauʀijan, from Proto-Germanic *hauzijaną (“to hear”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ḱh₂owsyéti (“to be sharp-eared”), from *h₂eḱ- (“sharp”) + *h₂ows- (“ear”) + *-yéti (denominative suffix). Cognates Cognate with North Frisian hear, hiar, hiir, hiire (“to hear”), Saterland Frisian heere, here (“to hear”), West Frisian hearre (“to hear”), Bavarian hearn (“to hear”), Central Franconian hüre (“to hear”), Cimbrian hòrran, höarn (“to hear”), Dutch horen (“to hear”), German and Low German hören (“to hear”), Luxembourgish héieren (“to hear”), Yiddish הערן (hern, “to hear”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål høre (“to hear”), Elfdalian ära (“to hear”), Faroese hoyra (“to hear”), Icelandic heyra (“to hear”), Norwegian Nynorsk haur, høra, høre, høyra, høyre (“to hear”), Swedish höra (“to hear”), Gothic 𐌷𐌰𐌿𐍃𐌾𐌰𐌽 (hausjan, “to hear”); also Greek ακούγω (akoúgo), ακούω (akoúo, “to hear”), Italiot Greek κούω (koúo, “to hear”), Tocharian B āks- (“to awaken”).

interjection

  1. 1

    you hear me

    Y'all come back now, hear?

Forms

past tense
heard
past participle
heard
present participle
hearing
third person singular
hears
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).