deer

UK/dɪə/US/dɪɹ/

nounA2Common in everyday speech and writing · #2,669 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: deers

A deer is a gentle forest animal, and the male grows big branching horns. A herd of deer, a red deer, deer in the headlights.

The antlers are grown and shed every year, which is unusual — horns are permanent and antlers are not. Deer is the same in the singular and plural. Note that the Old English word simply meant an animal of any kind, and narrowed to this one, which is why German Tier still means animal.

Definitions of deer

1noundeerA hoofed forest animal, the male often antlered.A2
“A deer ran across the road in front of our car.”

deer is an animal.

Where it comes from

Old English deor meant any animal. German Tier still means animal, and the English word narrowed to one species.

Proto-Indo-European
*dʰewsóm — living thing
Proto-Germanic
*deuzą
Proto-West Germanic
*deuʀ
Old English
dēor — animal
Middle English
der
English, today
deer

Built from

deer · Middle English — animal, deer
*dʰéws · Proto-Indo-European — breath

From Middle English der, deer (“animal, deer”), from Old English dēor (“animal”), from Proto-West Germanic deuʀ, from Proto-Germanic deuzą, from Proto-Indo-European dʰewsóm (“living thing”), from dʰéws (“breath”), full-grade derivative of dʰwes-. Cognate with Scots deer (“deer”), frr dier (“animal, beast”), West Frisian dier (“animal, beast”), Dutch dier (“animal, beast”), German Low German Deer, Deert (“animal”), German Tier (“animal, beast”), Swedish djur (“animal, beast”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk dyr (“animal, beast”), Icelandic dýr (“animal, beast”). Related also to Albanian dash (“ram”) (possibly), Lithuanian daũsos (“upper air; heaven”), Lithuanian dùsti (“to sigh”), Russian душа́ (“breath, spirit”), Lithuanian dvė̃sti (“to breathe, exhale”), Sanskrit ध्वंसति (“he falls to dust”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Animals

Practise this word

deer in the wild

Unlike most other deer species, moose do not form herds and are solitary animals, aside from calves who remain with their mother until the cow begins estrus again.
Moose
The roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), also known as the roe, western roe deer, or European roe, is a species of deer.
Roe deer
The roe is a small deer, reddish and grey-brown, and well-adapted to cold environments.
Roe deer
Mule deer are found in the western and central parts of North America.
Mule deer
Mule deer have also been introduced to Argentina and Kauai, Hawaii.
Mule deer

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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