tyre
Pluraltyres
US spellingtire
Pluraltyres
- 1A ring, usually of rubber or a plastic composite, that fits round a wheel to protect it and is either solid or inflated with air.
The lorry's front tyre burst on the motorway, and the driver steered safely onto the hard shoulder.
Many forklifts run on solid tyres that cannot be punctured.
UsageOften a flat tyre or a burst tyre; do not confuse it with the verb tire, to become tired.
Note
Britain and Ireland spell it tyre, a spelling revived in the 19th century after tyre and tire had both been written in the 15th and 16th; the United States and Canada kept tire.
- 2A Lebanese city and major seaport on the Levantine Sea, which was a Phoenician city-state in ancient times and briefly the capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem after Jerusalem fell in 1187.
Alexander the Great took Tyre after a long siege, building a causeway out to the island city.
Merchants from Tyre carried purple dye and cedar wood to ports across the Mediterranean.
- 3A band of metal, usually steel and formerly wrought iron, that forms or covers the rim of a wooden or metal wheel, as on horse-drawn or railway vehicles and locomotives.
On older locomotives, each driving wheel carried a steel tyre that could be replaced once it wore thin.
The wheelwright heated the tyres in a fire so that they would expand before being fitted round the wooden wheels.
Note
The older tyre belongs to the days when wheels were shod with iron: iron tyres for the coach and iron shoes for the horse. Railways keep the word for the steel rim of a locomotive or carriage wheel, as in tyres and rails of steel, and Trains Illustrated in 1960 warned that some brake-blocks could reduce adhesion and so make a train likelier to skid.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- The older meaning refers to iron bands fitted around wheels. en.wikipedia.org
- The braking of trains appeared in Trains Illustrated in April 1960. gersociety.org.uk
- The article stated that certain brake-block compositions could reduce adhesion and increase the likelihood of skidding. en.wiktionary.org
Less common meanings
- 4To fit a vehicle, or a wheel, with a tyre or tyres.
It took two men and a trough of cold water to tyre a wooden wheel.
The coachbuilder tyred the new wagons with solid rubber for the city's cobbled streets.
Note
The verb belongs to the wheelwright's yard, where tyring a wheel meant fitting its iron band while it was hot: 'a warm job, too', as The Listener put it in 1929. Its forms keep the British y throughout (tyres, tyring, tyred), so a wheel that has been tyred has been fitted, not worn out.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Wheelwrights fitted iron tyres to wheels while the iron was hot. wheelwrights.org
- The Listener used the quoted words in 1929. en.wiktionary.org
- The verb has the forms tyres, tyring and tyred, and means fitting tyres. en.wiktionary.org
- 5Clothing, or the way a person is dressed.
The ambassadors came to court in rich tyre of velvet and cloth of gold.
And feeble nature cloth'd with fleshly tyre
1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie QueeneNote
Possibly attire with its first syllable worn away, and it means the same thing. Spenser has feeble nature 'cloth'd with fleshly tyre' in The Faerie Queene (1590), the body itself pictured as clothing. The word is obsolete; a modern writer says attire or dress.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 5 facts
- The clothing noun tyre possibly comes from attire with its first syllable removed. en.wiktionary.org
- The noun means attire. en.wiktionary.org
- Spenser's The Faerie Queene contains the quoted wording. en.wikisource.org
- The part containing the quotation was first published in 1590. en.wikipedia.org
- The quotation pictures flesh or the body as clothing. en.wikisource.org
- 6To decorate someone or something so as to make them finer or more beautiful.
Note
The verb that goes with the old noun for clothing, and like it possibly cut down from attire: to tyre someone was to dress them finely, to deck them out. It is obsolete; modern English adorns, decks or dresses up instead.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- The verb belongs with the clothing noun and shares its possible derivation from attire. en.wiktionary.org
- To tyre someone meant to dress or adorn them. en.wiktionary.org
- 7Milk that has been curdled into a thick, set mass.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origins
Where the word comes from is disputed. The Oxford English Dictionary proposes attire as its source; others link it to the verb tie, a view George Sturt put forward in The Wheelwright's Shop (1923): a metal tyre was fitted red-hot and, as it shrank, drew the wooden wheel tight. English used both tyre and tire in the 15th and 16th centuries. Tyre came back into use in the 19th century, and today the United Kingdom, Ireland and most Commonwealth countries, past and present, spell it that way, while the United States and Canada use only tire.
Possibly a shortening of attire.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- Tyre possibly originated as a shortening of attire. en.wiktionary.org
The name comes through Latin Tyrus and Ancient Greek Τύρος (Túros) from Phoenician Ṣur, 'rock', because the town was first built on a rocky site. Arabic ṣūr and Hebrew Tzor are related names.