dear

1. 1.

   a beloved person; used as terms of endearment

   Synonymsbeloveddearesthoneylove

   Broaderlover
2. 2.

   a sweet innocent mild-mannered person (especially a child)

   Synonymslamb

   Broaderinnocent

1. 1.

   with affection

   “she loved him dearly”

   “he treats her affectionately”

   Synonymsdearlyaffectionately
2. 2.

   at a great cost

   “he paid dearly for the food”

   “this cost him dear”

   Synonymsdearly

Other forms of dear

plural

dears·

comparative

dearer·

superlative

dearest·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about dear

What does dear mean?

dear means "dearly loved". That is the primary sense; the word has 8 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in dear?

dear has 1 syllable: dear. In IPA it is /ˈdɪɹ/.

What is another word for dear?

Close synonyms include beloved, darling, good, near, devout. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is dear a common word?

dear is banded "Core" — among the few thousand words that carry most english. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with dear?

7 words rhyme with dear. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.