spar

Meanings

Noun

• A rafter of a roof.
• A thick pole or piece of wood.
• A bar of wood used to fasten a door.
• Any linear object used as a mast, sprit, yard, boom, pole or gaff.
• A beam-like structural member that supports ribs in an aircraft wing or other airfoil.
• A sparring session; a preliminary fight, as in boxing or cock-fighting.
• Any of various microcrystalline minerals, of light, translucent, or transparent appearance, which are easily cleft.
• Any crystal with readily discernible faces.

Verb

• to bolt, bar.
• To supply or equip (a vessel) with spars.
• To fight, especially as practice for martial arts or hand-to-hand combat.
• To strike with the feet or spurs, as cocks do.
• To contest in words; to wrangle.

Origin

• From Middle English sparre ("spar, rafter, beam") (noun), sparren (verb), from Middle Dutch sparre or Middle Low German Sparre, all ultimately from Proto-Germanic *sparrô ("stake, beam"), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)par- ("beam, log").
• Compare Dutch spar ("balk"), German Sparren ("rafter, spar"), Danish sparre ("spar"), Albanian shparr, shpardh. Perhaps also compare spear.
• From Middle English sparren ("to dart out; to strike out"), from Old English sperran, spirran, spyrran, related to Low German sparre ("a struggling, striving"), German sich sperren ("to struggle, resist, oppose"), Icelandic sperrask ("to kick out at, thrust, struggle").
• From Middle Low German spar, sper; or from a backformation of sparstone, from Middle English sparston ("gypsum, chalk"), from Old English spærstān ("gypsum"). Related to German Sparkalk ("plaster"), Old English spæren ("of plaster, of mortar").