Other forms: heard, hearing, hears
To hear is to take in a sound whether you meant to or not. A door slams two floors down and you hear it; you hear rain start against the window; you hear your own name across a crowded room and turn round.
Hold hear and listen apart: hearing arrives on its own, listening is something you do. Hear also carries news — I hear she is moving, have you heard from Ana, I have never heard of that band. Courts hear cases and committees hear evidence, which is the formal end of the word. Hear somebody out means let them finish before you argue, and hear, hear! called out in a meeting means I agree with that. One habit of English worth copying: you say I can hear the bell rather than I am hearing it, because hear behaves like a state, not an activity.
1verbhearTo notice a sound through your ears, without trying to.~63%
“Did you hear that noise in the loft?”
2verbreceiveTo be told something, or to receive news.~2%
“I hear you have been promoted.”
3verblistenTo listen to a case or evidence formally and judge it.~35%
“The court will hear the appeal in October.”
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.
Hear comes from Old English hīeran, through Proto-Germanic *hauzijaną. Further back the Indo-European form meant something like 'to be sharp-eared', joining *h₂eḱ-, 'sharp', to *h₂ows-, 'ear'. Hearing was named as a keenness, not as a hole in the side of your head.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂eḱ-
Middle English
heren
English, today
hear
Built from
From Middle English heren. From Middle English har, heoren, her, here, heren, from Old English hēran, hīeran, hīran, hȳran (“to hear”), from Proto-West Germanic hauʀijan, from Proto-Germanic hauzijaną (“to hear”), from Proto-Indo-European h₂ḱh₂owsyéti (“to be sharp-eared”), from h₂eḱ- (“sharp”) + h₂ows- (“ear”) + -yéti (denominative suffix). 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA