# ore

Pronunciation: US say "OR" /oɹ/; UK say "AW" /ɔː/

## Noun

1. Natural rock or other material that holds enough metal, gems or other valuable minerals to be worth mining and processing.
   - Simple: Rock or other natural material with enough metal or other useful minerals in it to be worth mining.
   - _Trucks haul iron ore from the open pit to the processing plant around the clock._
   - _The region's copper ores are low-grade but plentiful._
2. Another spelling of öre: a unit of Swedish money equal to one hundredth of a krona. — Alternative form of öre.
   - Simple: Another spelling of öre: a small unit of Swedish money. 100 öre make one krona.
   - _The coffee at the station cost twenty-four kronor and fifty ore._
   - _Every price on the old Stockholm menu ended in ninety ore._

## Preposition

3. Obsolete form of over: above, across, or covering, a short spelling found mainly in older poetry. *(obsolete)* — Obsolete form of over.
   - Simple: Old spelling of over: above, across, or covering something, seen mostly in old poems.

## Noun

4. A fine grade of wool, especially that for which the Herefordshire market town of Leominster was once known. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: A kind of fine wool, once made in the town of Leominster in Herefordshire.
5. Seaweed, especially the kind washed up on the shore. *(archaic)*
   - Simple: Seaweed, especially seaweed that the sea has washed up on the shore.

## Other meanings

- (noun) A unit of currency used in England from about the 10th to the 12th century.

## Origin

**Meaning 1** — Middle English used the forms or and oor, combining two Old English words: ōra, meaning "ore, unwrought metal," whose earlier origin is uncertain, and ār, meaning "brass, copper, bronze." The ancestry of ār runs through Proto-Germanic *aiz to Proto-Indo-European *áyos. Comparable words include Latin aes ("bronze, copper"), Sanskrit áyas ("copper, iron"), Old Norse eir ("brass, copper"), Gothic aiz ("brass, bronze, copper"), German ehern ("of metal, of iron"), and Dutch oer ("bog iron ore").
**Meaning 5** — A southern variant of ware ("seaweed").
**Meaning 4** — Possibly first a figurative use of ore in its "metal-bearing" sense, with Leominster's "ore" standing for the wealth of the town.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/ore (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).