veer

• (General Australian, Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /vɪə̯/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /vɪ(ə)ɹ/
• Rhymes: -ɪə(ɹ)

Borrowed from Middle Dutch vieren (“to slacken”).

veer (third-person singular simple present veers, present participle veering, simple past and past participle veered)

2. (obsolete, nautical) To let out (a sail-line), to allow (a sheet) to run out.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     As when a skilfull Marriner doth reed / A storme approching, that doth perill threat, / He will not bide the daunger of such dread, / But strikes his sayles, and vereth his mainsheat, / And lends vnto it leaue the emptie ayre to beat.

Borrowed from Middle French virer.

veer (plural veers)

2. A turn or swerve; an instance of veering.
   • 1917, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society:

     […] there is always a sudden, though small rise in the barometer, and a sudden drop of temperature of several degrees, sometimes as much as ten or fifteen degrees; there is also a sudden veer in the wind direction.

veer (third-person singular simple present veers, present participle veering, simple past and past participle veered)

2. (intransitive) To change direction or course suddenly; to swerve.

   The car slid on the ice and veered out of control.

   • 1697, Virgil, “(please specify the book number)”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:

     And as he leads, the following navy veers.

   • 1796, Edmund Burke, Letters on a Regicide Peace:

     We are in a war of a peculiar nature. It is not with an ordinary community which is hostile or friendly as passion or as interest may veer about.

   • 1951 April, R. S. McNaught, “Railway Enthusiasts”, in Railway Magazine, number 600, page 269:

     In recent years, the attitude of the railway authorities towards large-scale visits to works and sheds on the whole, has, happily, veered round from suspicion, and even point-blank opposition, to one of co-operation and ready welcome.

   • 2012 November 7, Matt Bai, “Winning a Second Term, Obama Will Confront Familiar Headwinds”, in New York Times‎^[1]:

     At this time in 2008, even as the global economy veered toward collapse, optimism about Washington ran surprisingly high.

   • 2021 February 24, Greg Morse, “Great Heck: a tragic chain of events”, in RAIL, number 925, pages 38, 39:

     As he neared a bridge over the East Coast Main Line near Great Heck, he lost control. His Land Rover left the carriageway and veered onto the hard shoulder before biting into the grass verge.
     [page 39] It ran derailed for about 500 yards before encountering a set of points, which caused it to veer into the path of an Immingham-Ferrybridge coal train, powered by Freightliner 66521 (one of a class of locomotive well-known for being well-built enough to destroy anything that got in its way).

   • 2023 October 11, Jonathan Jones, “Frieze London art fair review – a graveyard of creativity for tasteless one percenters”, in The Guardian‎^[2], →ISSN:

     As for the legions of paintings, they veer between the bland and bizarre.

3. (intransitive, of the wind) To shift in a clockwise direction (if in the Northern Hemisphere, or in a counterclockwise direction if in the Southern Hemisphere).^[1]
   • 1966, F. K. Hare, The Restless Atmosphere, 4th edition, Hutchinson University Library

     It is clear that when a front passes the observer, there must be a sudden shift in wind: in the northern hemisphere it will always veer, that is, shift in a clockwise sense.

4. (intransitive, nautical, of the wind) To shift aft.^[1]
5. (intransitive, nautical) To change direction into the wind; to wear ship.
6. (transitive) To turn.

• (antonym(s) of “of the wind, to shift clockwise”): back
• (antonym(s) of “of the wind, to shift aft”): haul forward

• Vere, ever

From Dutch veer.

• Audio:

  (file)

veer (plural vere)

1. feather

• IPA^(key): /veːˀər/, [ˈʋeːˀɐ]
• Rhymes: -eːˀər

veer

1. plural of ve

• IPA^(key): /veːr/, [vɪːr]

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: veer
• Rhymes: -eːr

A contraction of veder, from Middle Dutch vedere, from Old Dutch fethara, from Proto-West Germanic *feþru, from Proto-Germanic *feþrō, from Proto-Indo-European *péth₂r̥ ~ pth₂én- (“feather, wing”), from *peth₂- (“to fly”). The sense "spring" is derived from the ability of feathers to resume their shape when bent.

Cognate with Low German Fedder, German Feder, West Frisian fear, English feather, Danish fjer, Swedish fjäder.

veer f (plural veren, diminutive veertje n)

1. a feather, plume

   Synonym: pluim

2. a mechanical spring (e.g. metallic helix which resists stress)
3. a twisted leaf, notably of a fern

• veder (feather, dated)

• Afrikaans: veer
• → Caribbean Javanese: pir
• → Indonesian: per (“spring”)

veer

1. inflection of veren:
   1. first-person singular present indicative
   2. (in case of inversion) second-person singular present indicative
   3. imperative

From Middle Dutch vere, from Old Dutch feri, from Proto-Germanic *farjaną.

Cognate with German Fähre.

veer n (plural veren, diminutive veertje n)

1. ferry

• overzet
• pont, veerpont m, veerboot

• Afrikaans: veer
• → Sranan Tongo: fer
  • → Caribbean Hindustani: fer
  • → Caribbean Javanese: fir, pir

• erve, ever, vere, vree

• vaaier (Gronings)

From Low German, from Middle Low German vêr, from Old Saxon fiuwar. Ultimately cognate to German vier.

veer

1. four (4)

From Proto-Finnic *veeri.

This entry needs pronunciation information. If you are familiar with the IPA then please add some!

veer (genitive veere, partitive veert)

1. edge

• “veer”, in [EKSS] Eesti keele seletav sõnaraamat [Descriptive Dictionary of the Estonian Language] (in Estonian) (online version), Tallinn: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus (Estonian Language Foundation), 2009
• “veer”, in [ÕS] Eesti õigekeelsussõnaraamat ÕS 2018 [Estonian Spelling Dictionary] (in Estonian) (online version), Tallinn: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus (Estonian Language Foundation), 2018, →ISBN
• veer in Sõnaveeb (Eesti Keele Instituut)

From Middle Low German vêr, from Old Saxon fiuwar. Ultimately cognate to German vier, English four.

veer

1. (in some dialects, including Low Prussian and Münsterland) four (4)

• Plautdietsch: veea

From Old Norse vita.

• IPA^(key): [ˈveːɹ]

veer

1. (Fjolde) to know

• “veer” in Anders Bjerrum and Marie Bjerrum (1974), Ordbog over Fjoldemålet, Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag.

From earlier vēr, from Middle Dutch vier, from Old Dutch *fier, from Proto-West Germanic *feuwar, from Proto-Germanic *fedwōr, from Proto-Indo-European *kʷetwóres.

• IPA^(key): /veːʁ/
• Rhymes: -eːʁ

veer (Eupen)

1. (cardinal number) four

veer

1. Alternative form of firre

veer m

1. indefinite plural of ve

veer

1. Alternative form of veoir

Inherited from Latin vidēre, from Proto-Indo-European *weyd- (“to know; see”).

• IPA^(key): /βeˈeɾ/
• Rhymes: -eɾ

veer

1. to see
   • 13th century, Vindel manuscript, Martín Codax, Ai ondas que eu vim veer (facsimile)

     Ay ondas que eu uin ueer / ſe me ſaberedes dizer / por que tarda meu amigo sẽ mj

     Oh waves that I came to see / say unto me / Why my lover lingers thus away from me?

• Galician: ver
• Portuguese: ver

veer (first-person singular present veo, first-person singular preterite veí, past participle veído)

1. Obsolete spelling of ver.

• “veer”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.7, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2023 November 28