shore
Pluralshores
Pluralshores
- 1The strip of land that meets a sea, lake, pond, or other body of still water.
The boat drifted toward the rocky shore as the tide came in.
Thousands of birds nest along the northern shores of the lake.
Note
Behind the everyday word stands a harder image. Proto-Germanic *skurô meant a rugged rock or cliff, and Old English *sċora survives only in place names. A link to sċieran, 'to cut', the ancestor of today's shear, is possible but unproven. The noun pairs freely with whatever it borders, as in lake shore, bay shore, river shore and rocky shore. It has nothing to do with the builder's prop, a separate word borrowed from Middle Dutch.
- 2The land near a harbor or port, especially as viewed from a ship.
The crew spent two days on shore before the next voyage.
Cranes lifted containers from the ship to the shore.
Oppositesea
Note
Here the land is seen from the deck. For people who live on the water, shore is everything that is not ship. The word works in the phrase on shore, where seamen serve when they are not at sea. It also works as a modifier before another noun, as in shore tours for passengers stepping off at port.
- 3To reinforce or strengthen something that is at risk of collapsing or failing.
Engineers worked through the night to shore up the damaged bridge.
The new evidence helped shore up her argument in court.
Similarbolster
Note
Adding up turns support into rescue. What is shored up is in danger of failing, whether it is a dock partly fallen into the water or a person after a failed exam. The phrase stretches easily from structures to people and plans, and bolster and prop up are its nearest synonyms. Robert Kerr's General History of Voyages (1811) shows the older open pattern, with caravels 'shored upright with spars'.
- 4A prop or supporting beam placed to hold up a structure or the weight above it.
Timber shores supported the excavation walls as the crew dug deeper.
A single steel shore bore the weight of the floor above.
Similarprop, brace, strut, support
Note
The prop is a different word from the coastline altogether. It came into late Middle English from Middle Dutch schore and Middle Low German schōre, both meaning 'a prop, a stay', and it has a Norse cousin in skorða. Beyond those, its origin is unknown. From this noun grew the verb of propping, so a shore is what you shore with.
- 5To provide something with support, as with a prop or beam.
Carpenters shored the roof while they replaced the rotten support.
The crew must shore the trench walls before anyone climbs in.
Similarsupport, strengthen, reinforce, buttress
Note
Without up, the verb is a working term of the trades. Mine roofs are shored with timbers, trench walls with sheet piling, and boat strips are shored in place while epoxy sets. The -ing form names the whole arrangement, as in a shoring system. Forensic medicine borrows the verb too: Vincent Di Maio's Gunshot Wounds (1999) describes 'shored' exit wounds, where firm surfaces braced the skin as the bullet left.
- 6Past tense of shear. Archaic; the usual past tense is sheared.
Note
An old strong-verb past, it stands beside the regular sheared and carries a weightier, more epic tone. Tolkien reaches for it in The Two Towers (1954), where a blue-gleaming blade 'shore through' a web 'like a scythe through grass'. That is the sword-stroke meaning of shear, cutting with a blade, and it shows where this form still feels at home.
- 7A sewer or covered drainage channel for waste water.
Heavy rain flooded the old shore beneath the village lane.
Workers in Glasgow cleared the choked shore after the storm.
Note
The drain began as common-shore, and Shakespeare and Addison both write the longer form. Shakespeare speaks of 'common-shores of filthe', and in 1705 Addison mentions 'the old common-shore of Rome'. The clipped shore is obsolete in general English but survives in Scotland. In a Scottish street, then, the word may mean the drain under your feet rather than the coast.
- 8To put someone or something ashore from a vessel.
I will bring these two moles, these blind ones, aboard him: if he think it fit to shore them again
c. 1610, William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”Note
Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale uses it of people rather than cargo. Two 'blind moles' brought aboard may be shored again if the master thinks fit. Where the verb of coming to land takes no object, this one always does: someone or something is shored. Like its intransitive partner, it has dropped out of use, and put ashore and land now do the work.
- 9To come to or arrive at the shore.
At dawn the weary fishermen shored, glad to feel solid ground again.
the ship quickened her way, and shot past that rocke, where wee thought shee would have shored.
1589, Richard Hakluyt, The Principall NavigationsNote
In Richard Hakluyt's Principall Navigations of 1589, a ship shoots past a rock 'where wee thought shee would have shored'. The arrival feared there is a grounding, not a welcome landfall. The verb takes no object and is now obsolete. Modern English says instead that a vessel reaches shore, comes ashore or runs aground.
- 10To threaten someone with unpleasant consequences, or to warn off or frighten away.
The watchman shored the trespassers, swearing to set the dogs upon them.
The Gleds might pyked her at the dyke, Before the lads wad shored them off her.
1810, Robert-Hartley Cromek, Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway SongNote
A Scots verb of menace, it is unrelated to either the coast or the prop. Its origin is uncertain, but the matching noun is already in Barbour's Bruce in 1375: 'vith gret schoyr and mannasyng'. With off it means drive away, as when lads 'shored them off'. With ill it means threaten harm, as with omens 'to shore us ill'. The verb is archaic and belongs to Scots and Northern English.
- 11Of clouds or the sky, to threaten rain.
The gray morning sky shored rain, so the farmers hurried their harvest.
For a' our tears and sighs are but in vain: Come, help me up; — yon sooty cloud shores rain.
1733, Allan Ramsay, “A Pastoral on the death of M. Prior”Note
Weather borrows the Scots verb of menace, and clouds rather than people do the threatening. Allan Ramsay, in 1733, has 'yon sooty cloud shores rain', with the rain as a plain direct object. William Watt's poems of 1860 use of instead, describing a wind 'shorin' o' drift' as snow gathers. Both are archaic Scots.
- 12To offer or present something to someone.
The merchant shored fine silks to the visiting lord.
Custom required that they shore the elders the first share of the meal.
Note
This is a Scots verb of giving, now archaic, and it is built like offer and present: you shore someone something. David Vedder's Poems, Lyrics, and Sketches (1878) has "a compliment kindly and decently shored," so courtesy can be shored as readily as goods. It shares its uncertain origin with the Scots verb "to threaten". In modern writing, offer does its work.
- 13Pronunciation spelling of sure.
Shore as the sun rises, he'll be late again.
I'm shore that's the right road home.
Note
Spelled this way, sure is meant to be heard rather than read: the writer is putting a Scots voice on the page. It does the adverb's usual work of 'without doubt' or 'without fail'. Apart from the letters, it shares nothing with the other shores. A reader meeting it in dialogue should hear certainty, not coastline.
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Origins
From Middle English schore, from Old English *sċora, from Proto-Germanic *skurô meaning 'rugged rock, cliff, high rocky shore'. It is possibly related to Old English sċieran ('to cut'), which survives today as 'shear', and has cognates in Middle Dutch scorre and Middle Low German schor.
From Late Middle English shore ('a prop, a support'), from Middle Dutch schore ('a prop, a stay') and Middle Low German schōre ('a prop, a stay; barrier'); the further etymology is unknown.
From Late Middle English shoren ('to prop, to support'), from Middle English shore ('a prop, a support', see etymology 2) plus the verb-forming suffix -en; compare Middle Dutch schooren ('to prop up, support').
Uncertain origin. The word is attested in Northern English and Scots, with schore ('to threaten') recorded before 1400; it may ultimately be related to Old Scots schoir ('steep, of a crag'), linked to 'shear', or alternatively a variant of 'score' or 'sure'.