Tor

Pronunciation

• US IPA: /tɔɹ/
• UK IPA: /tɔː(ɹ)/

Full definition of tor

Noun

1. Alternative form of tore ("hard, difficult; strong; rich").

From Middle English tor, torr-, from Old English torr, tor ("a high rock, lofty hill, tower"), possibly from Proto-Celtic, compare Old Welsh *tor ("hill"); ultimately from Latin turris ("high structure"), from Ancient Greek τύρρις, τύρσις (týrsis, "tower"), of non-Indo-European origin. Cognate with Cornish tor, Scottish Gaelic tòrr, Welsh tŵr, Irish torr, French tor, and Romansch tor/tur/tuor; the first four are from Proto-Celtic (from Latin turris), the last two directly from Latin turris (from Ancient Greek τύρρις and τύρσις). It is not clear whether the Celtic forms were borrowed from Old English or vice versa. See also tower.

Noun

1. A craggy outcrop of rock on the summit of a hill.
2. (South-West England) A hill.
• 1855, Charles Kingsley, Westward Ho!, Tickor and Fields (1855), pages 104-105:Bursdon and Welsford were then, as now, a rolling range of dreary moors, unbroken by tor or tree, or anything save few and far between a world-old furze-bank which marked the common rights of some distant cattle farm, and crossed then, not as now, by a decent road, but by a rough confused trackway, the remnant of an old Roman road from Clovelly dikes to Launceston.
• 1902, Arthur Conan Doyle, , Chapter 9:The moon was low upon the right, and the jagged pinnacle of a granite tor stood up against the lower curve of its silver disc.
• 2008, Lydia Joyce, Shadows of the Night, Signet Eclipse (2008), ISBN 9780451223425, page 242:She had slipped the letters into her pocket next to the packet of antique documents and had taken an umbrella—as the sky was ominous out over the distant tors—and strolled around the manor house and down the road toward the village.
3. (UK, dialect) A tower; a turret.

Anagrams

• ort, OTR, rot, RTO, TRO