boor

Etymology

It is borrowed from Dutch boer (“farmer, peasant”),^[2][3][4][5] in early use probably also borrowed from Middle Low German būr.^[2][6][7] The Dutch noun, recorded from the early 16th century, was originally a regional variant of buur (“neighbour, inhabitant, country person”),^[2] apparently shortened from Middle Dutch gebuur, also spelled ghebuur.^[2][4] That form is cognate with Old English gebūr (“dweller, farmer”),^[2][8] Old Saxon gibūr and Old High German gibūr, also gibūro.^[2][4] All of them join the bases of y- and bower, and probably first meant someone living in the same house or homestead.^[2] Ayto and Dictionary.com trace the base to Proto-Germanic *bū- (“to dwell”),^[9][10] and Etymonline to Proto-Indo-European *bheue- (“to be, exist, grow”).^[11] The Old English noun was earlier, and the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins says it disappeared after the Norman Conquest and that the mid-16th-century word was readopted from Dutch and German.^[12][6] Weekley argued the same from the rarity of the word before about 1500 and its use for Dutch and German people.^[13] Collins, however, derives the modern word directly from the Old English noun,^[14] and Chambers allows that it may be partly from it.^[15] Barnhart and Etymonline begin the English history earlier, with a Middle English word for a peasant, boveer, from Old French bovier (“herdsman”), from Latin bōs (“cow, ox”),^[16][11] which Barnhart records in the surnames “Buver” (1236) and “Bover” (1268),^[16] and which Etymonline dates to the early 14th century.^[11] They see the Dutch word as coming in later,^[16][11] and Etymonline regards the Old French and Germanic words as unrelated in origin, though merged in English.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

A peasant, a countryman: 1548, in W. Turner's Names of Herbes.^[2] Dictionary.com dates the word to 1545–55,^[10] and Barnhart records the spellings bour in 1551 and boor in 1581.^[16]

Semantic evolution

The word began as a neutral term for a farmer or peasant,^[9][17] often one from abroad: the OED records it specifically of Dutch or German peasants from 1581 to 1904, and of peasants of other foreign countries from 1623 to 1917.^[2] Etymonline contrasts this use for farm labourers from other lands with the native yeoman.^[11] The word for a rude person grew out of the townsman's and the higher classes' low opinion of country people,^[11][17] a pejoration that Merriam-Webster's Book of Word Histories compares with that of villain.^[17] Both the sense "ignorant rustic" and the sense "rude, ill-mannered person" are first recorded in 1598, the first in Marston's satires and the second in Florio's Italian dictionary,^[2][16] and the Dutch noun was developing the same negative use by the early 17th century.^[2] The adjective boorish is recorded from 1562, according to Barnhart,^[16] but Barnhart dates its sense "rude, ill-bred" to 1660, in Pepys's diary,^[16] whereas Etymonline finds the negative sense in the adjective by the 1560s.^[11] Johnson (1755) defined the noun as a ploughman, a country fellow, a lout and a clown.^[18] Capitalised, it was used for a Dutch colonist in South Africa from the late 18th to the mid-19th century,^[6] and the Dutch word was borrowed again in the form Boer in the 19th century.^[9][7]

Timeline

• 1236 – Buver, as a surname, taken by Barnhart as an earlier form.^[16]
• before 1410 – boveer, peasant, countryman, probably in Lydgate.^[16]
• 1548 – a peasant, a countryman.^[2]
• 1562 – boorish, adjective.^[16]
• 1581 – a Dutch or German peasant.^[2]
• 1598 – an ignorant rustic; also a rude, ill-mannered person.^[2][16]
• 1623 – a peasant of any other foreign country.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A rude, clumsy or insensitive person: Some boor at the next table talked through the whole concert.^[14][4][2]
2. A country person regarded as coarse or ignorant; a yokel or bumpkin.^[4][2][6]
3. (rare) A small farmer or peasant, especially a foreign one.^[4][6]
4. (obsolete, 1581–1904) A Dutch or German peasant.^[2][6]

Word family

• boorish
• boorishness

Related words

• Boer
• bower
• neighbor
• be
• booth
• build
• husband

Usage notes

Wright's dialect dictionary also records a Lincolnshire boor, the woody material enclosing the fibre of flax and hemp, and a verb boor, to walk very fast, in Oxfordshire and Berkshire.^[19]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ a b c d e f Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
9. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
10. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
12. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
14. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
15. ^ The Chambers Dictionary (2014), 13th ed., Edinburgh: Chambers
16. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
17. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster's Book of Word Histories, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
18. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
19. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)