Other forms: gears
Gear is the equipment for a purpose — or one of the toothed wheels inside a machine. Two senses that share a word.
The equipment sense is informal and very broad, so climbing gear, camping gear and all the gear covers whatever the activity needs. The mechanical sense is precise, and a gear is a toothed wheel that meshes with another to trade speed for force, which is why bicycles and cars have several. From that come changing gear, being in the wrong gear and the figurative stepping up a gear. British slang also uses gear for clothes.
1nounequipmentEquipment or clothing for a particular purpose.~44%
“All the climbing gear was still in the boot.”
2noungearA toothed wheel that transmits motion in a machine.~56%
“He changed down a gear for the hill.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 16 sentences found in the wild and placed 16 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Old Norse
gervi
Middle English
gere
English, today
gear
From Middle English gere, from Old Norse gervi. From Middle English gere, a borrowing from Old Norse gervi, from Proto-Germanic garwijaną (“to prepare”). See also adjective yare, yar from the same root via Old English.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA