Forms: (5 boueer), 6–7 boore, bour, (7 bore, boar), 7– boor (9 bauer). [A word of involved history in and out of English, though the ultimate etymology is clear enough. The 16th c. bour, boore, may possibly have been native Eng., repr. an earlier *búr, short for OE. ʓebúr ‘dweller, husbandman, farmer, countryman’ (Bosw.), a deriv. of búr ‘dwelling, house, cottage, BOWER,’ f. the verb root, bū to dwell: cf. the compound neighbour:—ME. neȝebur:—OE. néahʓebúr ‘nigh-dweller,’ also modern East Anglian BOR ‘neighbour’ as a form of address. But on the whole, in its literary use, the word is more likely to have been adopted from LG. bûr, Du. boer: see the quots. under sense 2, and BOER. These words are themselves etymological equivalents (or nearly so) of OE. ʓebúr; the OHG. form being gibûr, gibûro, MHG. gebûr, gebûre, MLG. gebûr, and bûr (occurring 1365), mod.LG. buur (made bauer in mod.HG.), MDu. ghebure, ghebuer, and buer; also (late) geboer, which was not properly a Du. form, but probably, according to Cosijn, adopted from Frisian, or, according to Franck, from the LG. on the eastern frontier of the Netherlands. This last is in mod.Du. boer. The original sense of WGer. gibûr, gibûro, was ‘inmate of a bûr or BOWER, fellow-occupier of a dwelling, farm, or village; neighbour, mate.’ Partly from being preserved mainly in rural use, but largely from association with the vb. bûan (MHG., MDu. bûwen, Ger. bauen, Du. bouwen) to inhabit, cultivate, till (of which, as we have seen, it was not a derivative, though a cognate word from same root bū-), its original connection with bûr, BOWER, was lost, and the sense more and more confined to that of ‘peasant, rustic,’ and thence ‘clown.’
While mod. Ger. has merged the word in form with bauer, agent-noun from bauen ‘to cultivate, to build,’ mod. Du., on the contrary, makes a distinction in use between the native buur (MDu. ghebure, ghebuer) ‘neighbour,’ and the adopted boer (MDu. geboer) ‘peasant, husbandman, farmer, clown, knave at cards,’ and keeps both distinct from bouwer ‘tiller, builder’ (though in MDu. the latter was used in senses subsequently taken up by geboer, boer.]
1. A husbandman, peasant, countryman. Obs., exc. as in sense 3, into which it passes in later use.
[1430. See BOWER sb.5]
1551. Turner, Herbal (1568), A iiij b. Absinthium rusticum, that is bouris or pesantes wormwode.
1592. R. Johnson, 9 Worthies, B iv. A countrie Boore, a goodlie proper swayne.
1611. Shaks., Wint. T., V. ii. 173. Not sweare it?… Let Boores and Francklins say it, Ile sweare it.
1762. Hume, Hist. Eng. (1806), III. App. iii. 633. Some remains of the ancient slavery of the boors and peasants.
1798. Malthus, Popul. (1878), 326. While the land is cultivated by boors.
[1820. Scott, Monast., xxxvii. Times of action make princes into peasants, and boors into barons.
1850. Mrs. Browning, Vis. Poets, Poems I. 204. The boor who ploughs the daisy down.]
2. Particularly, a Dutch or German peasant. (For the latter more definitely bauer occurs.)
1581. J. Bell, Haddon’s Answ. Osor., 254. To accuse Luther for the uproares raysed by the countrey Boores in Germany.
1612. Woodall, Surg. Mate, Wks. (1653), 58. My self chanced in Holland into the house of a Bore (as they term him) to lodge.
1642. Fuller, Holy & Prof. St., II. xviii. 116. Germany hath her Boores, like our Yeomen.
1645. Pagitt, Heresiogr. (1662), 3. Upon this his preaching, about 40000 Bores and Trades-men rose up in Suevia.
1675. Lond. Gaz., No. 977/3. The Bores, assisted with 800 Spanish Soldiers.
1756. Nugent, Gr. Tour, Netherl., I. 41. The people of Holland may be divided into five classes. 1. The boors or husbandmen.
1800. Coleridge, Piccolom., I. ii. The Boors Can answer fresh demands already [= der Bauer kann Schon wieder geben].
1860. Motley, Netherl. (1868), II. ix. 11. Guarded by fifty men mostly boors of the country.
[1879. Baring-Gould, Germany, I. 50. But it was not only where the Code Napoléon was introduced, that lands were divided and subdivided till the owners sank from being nobles to bauers.]
b. A Dutch colonist in Guiana, South Africa, etc. (For the latter BOER is now employed.)
1824. Burchell, Trav., I. 13. The Boors must be heard, the Hottentots must be heard.
1832. Ht. Martineau, Demerara, ii. 23. The state of a boor as to health, comfort and security of property.
1834. Pringle, Afr. Sk., iv. 184. Few but the very poorest boors.
c. Extended to foreign peasants generally.
1687. Cleveland, Rustick Ramp., 488. What Boars of other Countrys could have compared with the Riches of our Peasants.
1764. Goldsm., Trav., 3. The rude Carinthian boor.
1798. Canning, in Anti-Jacobin, 12 March. Russian boors that daily kick.
1798. Malthus, Popul., II. iii. (1806), I. 368. The fortune of a Russian nobleman is measured by the number of boors that he possesses.
3. A peasant, a rustic, with lack of refinement implied; a country clown.
1598. Marston, Pygmal., ii. 142. I dull-sprighted fat Boetian Boore.
c. 1610. Rowlands, Terrible Batt., 38. A paltry rusticke peasant boore.
1750. Wesley, Wks. (1872), II. 207. Three or four boors would have been rude, if they durst.
1871. R. Ellis, Catullus, xxii. 14. A dunce more boorish e’en than hedge-born boor.
1874. Sayce, Compar. Philol., viii. 336. The country boor is blind to the beauties of nature.
b. fig. Any rude, ill-bred fellow; a ‘clown.’
1598. Florio, Grossolano, a lubber, a clowne, a boore, a rude fellow.
1723. De Foe, Col. Jack (1840), 4. He was as to manners a mere boor or clown.
1849. Miss Muloch, Ogilvies, i. (1875), 4. Hugh Ogilvie is a common-place, stupid boor.
1872. Black, Adv. Phaeton, xiii. 177. An ill-conditioned boor, not fit for the society of well-bred ladies.
4. Boor’s Mustard. [ad. early mod.Ger. baurensenfe peasant’s mustard.] A name given by herbalists (since Turner) to Thlaspi arvense, a British wild plant; by Gerard to Lepidium ruderale.
1548. Turner, Names of Herbes, Thlaspi … is called in duche Baurensenfe…. It may be named in englishe dysh-mustard, or triacle Mustard, or Boures Mustard.
1578. Lyte, Dodoens, 628. Turner calleth Thlaspi … Bowers mustarde.
1597. Gerard, Herbal, 204/5. Bowiers or Bowyers mustard.
1878. Britten & Holland, Plant-n., Boor’s mustard.
