Tare sb.¹

Forms: 4– tare, pl. 4 taren, 4–5 taris, 5– tares; also 5 thare, 6 taar(e, terre, ter(e, 9 dial. tar, tor. [A word of obscure origin and history: known first c. 1330 in sense 1, also c. 1400 in wiilde tare, a vetch of some kind, and in the later Wycliffite N. Test., 1388, used to render Gr. L. zīzania. For the form Kluge compares ODu. *taruwe, MDu. terwe, tarwe, a name of wheat, cogn. with Lith. dirva a wheat-field. But no satisfactory explanation has been offered of the transference of sense.]

  1.  The seed of a vetch: usually in reference to its small size. (Probably familiar in early times, as too frequently present in seed-corn.)

c. 1330.  Arth. & Merl. (Kölbing), 7354. Þei our folk tohewen waren To smale morsels, so beþ taren.

1530.  Palsgr., 279/1. Taare a corne lyke a pease, lupins.

1555.  Eden, Decades, 9. Many of them [grains of gold] … were as bygge as tares or fytchis.

1576.  Baker, Jewell of Health, 185. Take of this masse vnto the quantity of three Tares.

1657.  R. Ligon, Barbadoes, 65. This vermine will get … under the nayl of your Toes, and there make a habitation … as bigge as a small Tare.

1808.  Med. Jrnl., XIX. 287. A globule, about the size of a small tare, being thrown on paper moistened.

1854.  H. M. Hughes, Auscultation (ed. 2), 180. Let the student imagine the bubbles, the bursting of which gives rise to … the muco-crepitating rattle [to be] the size of a tare, and of a millet-seed.

1876.  Bristowe, The. & Pract. Med. (1878), 669. The follicles enlarge to the size of a tare or pea.

  † b.  Taken as a type of a very small particle; a whit, a jot, an atom. Obs.

c. 1386.  Chaucer, Reeve’s T., 80. But ther of sette the Millere nat a tare.

  2.  A name given to some species of vetch: a. in early times, esp. to those occurring as weeds in corn-fields. (Lyte, 1578, uses it only of these, applying ‘vetch’ or ‘fitch’ to Vicia sativa (sense b); with Gerarde, Ray, and later writers, ‘tare’ and ‘vetch’ become synonymous.)

  Still entering into the names of the ‘Hairy or Rough-podded Tare,’ Vicia hirsuta (Ervum hirsutum), and ‘Smooth Tare,’ V. tetrasperma (E. tetraspermum), corn-field weeds: see also STRANGLE-tare, TINE-tare. In quots. 1573–8, applied (after Dodoens) to Lathyrus Aphaca, now a rare ‘colonist’ in English corn-fields, but perhaps then more common, being imported with dirty seed-wheat. Formerly also applied vaguely to other plants of these and allied genera, or to weeds resembling them in their habit.

c. 1400.  Lanfranc’s Cirurg., 88. Orabum þat is wiilde tare.

c. 1450.  Alphita (Anecd. Oxon.), 131. Orobus, gall. uesche, anglice thare uel mousepese. Ibid., 186. Trifolium acutum, wildetare uel tintare.

1523.  Fitzherb., Husb., § 20. There be diuers maner of wedes, as thistyls, kedlokes, dockes,… dog-fenell, mathes, ter, and dyuers other small wedes. Ibid. Terre is the worste wede,… and groweth mooste in rye, and it groweth lyke fytches, but it is moche smaller, and it wyll growe as hyghe as the corne, and with the weyght therof, it pulleth the corne flatte to the erth, and freteth the eares away.

1573–80.  Baret, Alv., T 63. Tares which commonlie growe amongst corne, are temperate in heat, aphaca.

1578.  Lyte, Dodoens, IV. xxviii. 485. The Tare groweth in feeldes, & is found growing in this countrie, in fertil groundes amongst wheat & Rye.

1598.  Sylvester, Du Bartas, II. i. III. Furies, 166. Cockle, wilde Oats, rough Burs, Corn-cumbring Tares.

  b.  Now, in general agricultural use, applied to the cultivated vetch, Vicia sativa, grown (often with oats, etc.) as fodder. In a collective sense, or as name of a crop, used in plural form (cf. oats, in like use).

1482.  Cely Papers (Camden), 109. Yowre yonge horsse … wull ete noo mete yett but grasse and grene tarys.

1530.  Palsgr., 278/2. Taars a kynd of corn, dragee. [See DREDGE.]

1552.  Huloet, Tares or vetches, a kinde of pulse or grayne, cruila, cruum, orobum, i.

1577.  Harrison, England, II. vi. (1877), I. 153. Horssecorne, I meane, beanes, peasen, otes, tares, and lintels.

1697.  Dryden, Virg. Georg., I. 110. Where Vetches, Pulse, and Tares have stood.

1760.  R. Brown, Compl. Farmer, II. 87. Tares are of as great advantage to land as other pulses are.

1801.  Mason, Suppl. to Johnson, Tare, a name frequently given to the common vetch.

1846.  J. Baxter, Libr. Pract. Agric. (ed. 4), II. 312. Tares will do well on any rich or good soil.

1887.  Bowen, Virg. Eclogue, III. 100. Lean my bull, though be feeds on the richest tares.

  3.  pl. Used in the later Wycliffite (or Purvey) version of the N.T. (Matt. xiii. 25), also in some MSS. of the earlier text, and thence in Tindale’s and subsequent 16–17th-c. versions, to render L. zīzania (Vulg.), Gr. ζιζάνια, as name of an injurious weed among corn, which in the first Wyclif version had been rendered ‘dernel or cokil,’ the latter going back in translations and quotations to Old English, the former to Early ME.: see DARNEL, COCKLE. Obs. exc. as a biblical use, and as in b.

  Evidently Purvey and his co-revisers adopted tares as in their opinion more intelligible than the earlier ‘dernel’ or ‘cokil.’ Probably they thought of Vicia hirsuta the Strangle-tare, or other species of wild vetch, as familiar noxious weeds in English cornfields.

1388.  Wyclif, Matt. xiii. 25. Whanne men slepten, his enemy cam, and sewe aboue taris [1382 dernel; gloss or cokil] in the myddil of whete.

1526.  Tindale, ibid. Whyll men slepte ther cam his foo and sowed tares amonge the wheate.

1594.  Hooker, Eccl. Pol., III. i. § 9. His Church he compareth unto a field, where tares manifestly known and seen by all men do grow intermingled with good corn.

1611.  Bible, Matt. xiii. 36. Declare vnto vs the parable of the tares [1388 Wyclif taris, Tindale tares] of the field.

a. 1674.  Clarendon, Surv. Leviathan (1676), 307. These are the men who … watched the tares … and pulled them up.

  b.  Hence in allusive and fig. uses.

a. 1711.  Ken, Direct. Prayers, Wks. (1838), 354. The tares of sedition have been industriously sown among you.

1806.  T. Jefferson, Writ. (1830), IV. 64. They will not suffer friend or foe to sow tares among us.

1816.  Southey, Lay Laureate, lxvii. The heart of man is rich in all good seeds; Neglected, it is choak’d with tares and noxious weeds.

1818.  Byron, Ch. Har., IV. cxx. Weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste, Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes.

1840.  Drunkard’s Funeral Sermon, 12. How often the Enemy is permitted to scatter the tares of his foul kingdom upon the sunniest spots in our dark and inhospitable world!

1859.  J. R. Thompson, Poesy, 10.

1878.  Stubbs, Const. Hist., III. xxi. 615. In the new world, as in the old, the tares are mingled with the wheat.

  4.  attrib. and Comb., as tare hay, seed, verdage; tare-grass (dial. tar-grass), some species of wild tare or vetch (‘Vicia hirsuta or perh. V. Cracca,’ Britten & Holland); tare-thistle, ? the sow-thistle (Sonchus arvensis), a prickly plant growing as a weed in corn; tare-sown a., sown with tares (sense 3); tare-vetch (-fitch, tarvetch, -fitch), name for Vicia hirsuta and other wild or weedy species of vetch and allied plants.

1686.  Plot, Staffordsh., 204. The wild Vetch, here call’d *Tar-grass.

1694.  W. Westmacott, Script. Herb., 192. These wild sorts [of Tares] are called by some Tar-grass.

1763.  Museum Rust. (ed. 2), I. 225. I had last summer a crop of *tare-hay that was astonishing.

1578.  Lyte, Dodoens, IV. xxviii. 486. The *Tare seede is of a restringent vertue like y^e Lentil.

1797.  T. Park, Sonn., 110.

1880.  Sara H. Palfrey, The Chapel & Other Poems, 57.

1753.  Chambers, Cycl. Supp., s.v. Rabbit, The general cure is the keeping them low, and giving them the prickly herb, called *tare-thistle, to eat.

1778.  [W. Marshall], Minutes Agric., Digest, 44. Horses require very little corn when they are on a *tare-verdage.

1530.  Palsgr., 279/1. *Tarefytche a corne, lupyn.

1813.  T. Davis, Agric. Wilts, Gloss., Tare-vetch, withwind, the red and white striped convolvulus, these two plants are the plague of a weak wheat-crop in the sand-lands.

1886.  Britten & Holland, Eng. Plant-n., Tar-fitch…, Vicia hirsuta.—Salop. Blue Tar-fitch, Vicia Cracca.—Cheshire. Yellow Tar-fitch, Lathyrus pratensis.—Chesh.… Tar Vetch (or Tar-Vatch), Vicia hirsuta.—Dorset.