Other forms: tyres
A tyre is the rubber ring fitted round a wheel. A flat tyre, change the tyre, tyre pressure.
This is the British spelling; American English writes tire. Tread depth is the legal measure — one point six millimetres across the central three quarters in Britain — and tyre pressure affects fuel use, grip and wear more than most drivers realise. Note tyre wall, the side; and that a tyre and the verb tire, meaning to grow weary, are homophones in America and spelled apart in Britain for exactly that reason.
1nountyreThe rubber ring fitted round a wheel.
“We got a flat tyre on the way to the airport.”
synonyms: tire
tyre is a wheel covering.
Also accepted in games: tire
The word is probably a shortening of attire, meaning the covering or dress of a wheel — the iron band fitted round a cartwheel. Britain kept the y and America regularised to tire in the nineteenth century.
Middle English
tir
English, today
tyre
Built from
Attested in the sense “rim of a wheel” since ca. 1500. Generally considered to be a use of Middle English tir, a clipped byform of atir (“equipment, furnishings, ornament”), whence modern attire. A less accepted theory derives it from the verb to tie. The spelling tyre was predominant in the 16th century, but largely gave way to tire in the 17th and 18th, before it was revived again outside North America in the 19th century.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA