Other forms: furs, furred
Fur is the thick soft hair that covers an animal. The warm layer your fingers sink into on a cat's back; the grey drift of it on the sofa in spring.
On the animal it is uncountable, so a rabbit has fur, not furs, and it becomes a material the moment it comes off: a fur coat, fur-lined boots, fake fur round a hood. The plural furs means the garments themselves, the kind that hang in a hall cupboard and start arguments. The adjective is furry. People have hair rather than fur, so nobody talks about their own fur. In British kitchens a kettle furs up with limescale, and a doctor may describe a coated tongue as furred. When the fur flies, a proper row has broken out.
1nounfurThe thick soft hair covering an animal's body.~23%
“The dog's fur was matted with mud.”
2nounleftAnimal skin with the hair left on it, used to make clothes.~73%
“The collar is trimmed with fur.”
3nounpluralClothes made from animal skin and hair, used in the plural.~2%
“Her grandmother's furs still hang in the hall cupboard.”
4verbfillTo fill up with a hard chalky coating, as a kettle does, in British use.~2%
“The kettle furs up within a month in this water.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 17 sentences found in the wild and placed 17 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
fur is a covering of hair.
Fur began as a word for a case, not a creature. Middle English took furre from Anglo-Norman forre, a sheath or case, which came from Frankish *fōdar and Proto-Germanic *fōdrą, a sheath, and back to a Proto-Indo-European root peh₂-, to protect. The verb came from Anglo-Norman fourrer, to line or stuff. It is that lining that gives us the modern meaning: the animal hair you put inside a coat to keep the cold out.
Anglo-Norman
fuerre
Middle English
furre
English, today
fur
Built from
From Middle English furre, from Anglo-Norman fuerre. From Middle English furre,forre, from Anglo-Norman forre,fuerre (“case; sheath”), from Frankish fōdar, from Proto-West Germanic fōdr, from Proto-Germanic fōdrą (“sheath”) (compare Old English fōdor (“sheaf”), Dutch voering (“lining”), German Futter (“lining”), Gothic 𐍆𐍉𐌳𐍂 (“sheath”)), from Proto-Indo-European peh₂-, poh₂- (“to protect”) (compare Lithuanian piemuō (“protection”), Ancient Greek πῶῠ̈ (“flock”), πῶμα (“lid”), ποιμήν (“shepherd”), xcl հօրան (“herd, flock”), kmr pawan (“to watch over”), Sanskrit पाति (“he watches, protects”). The verb is from Middle English furren, from Anglo-Norman furrer, forrer, fourrer (“to line, stuff, fill”), from the noun.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA