# tyre

Pronunciation: UK say "TY-uh" /taɪə(ɹ)/; US say "TY-ur" /taɪɚ/

## Noun

1. A ring, usually of rubber or a plastic composite, that fits round a wheel to protect it and is either solid or inflated with air.
   - Simple: The ring of rubber or plastic that goes around a wheel, either filled with air or solid.
   - _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._
3. A 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.
   - Simple: A strong metal ring around the edge of a wheel, used on horse-drawn carriages and on trains.
   - _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._

## Proper noun · Tyre

2. A 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.
   - Simple: A large port city in Lebanon, by the sea, that was important in ancient times.
   - _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._

## Verb

4. To fit a vehicle, or a wheel, with a tyre or tyres.
   - Simple: To put tyres on a vehicle or a wheel.
   - _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._

## Noun

5. Clothing, or the way a person is dressed. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: The clothes that someone is wearing.
   - _The ambassadors came to court in rich tyre of velvet and cloth of gold._
   - _Pilgrims in plain grey tyre gathered at the abbey gate before dawn._

## Verb

6. To decorate someone or something so as to make them finer or more beautiful. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: To make someone or something look beautiful by adding decorations.

## Other meanings

- (noun) Milk that has been curdled into a thick, set mass.

## Origin

**Meanings 1, 3–4** — 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.
**Meanings 5–6** — Possibly a shortening of attire.
**Meaning 2** — 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.

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