Webster
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Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Tar

Tar (tär), n. [Abbrev. from tarpaulin.] A sailor; a seaman. [Colloq.] Swift.

Tar, n. [OE. terre, tarre, AS. teru, teoru; akin to D. teer, G. teer, theer, Icel. tjara, Sw. tjära, Dan. tiære, and to E. tree. √63. See Tree.] A thick, black, viscous liquid obtained by the distillation of wood, coal, etc., and having a varied composition according to the temperature and material employed in obtaining it.

Coal tar. See in the Vocabulary. — Mineral tar (Min.), a kind of soft native bitumen. — Tar board, a strong quality of millboard made from junk and old tarred rope. Knight. — Tar water. (a) A cold infusion of tar in water, used as a medicine. (b) The ammoniacal water of gas works. — Wood tar, tar obtained from wood. It is usually obtained by the distillation of the wood of the pine, spruce, or fir, and is used in varnishes, cements, and to render ropes, oakum, etc., impervious to water.

Tar, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Tarred; p. pr. & vb. n. Tarring.] To smear with tar, or as with tar; as, to tar ropes; to tar cloth.

To tar and feather a person. See under Feather, v. t.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Noah Porter, editor (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913). Public domain. Text as transcribed by MICRA, Inc., from Project Gutenberg. Changed for Deep Dive Bible: Greek, which our source spelled in Latin letters, set in Greek letters; entries of one spelling merged into one article; Greek words our source left out (shown as “?”), read from the 1898 printing, from the same plates (the Library of Congress’s copy), where the place could be found with certainty. Of the others, 1,362 (a word or a single letter each) were inferred by AI from the context by the dictionary’s own rules and are marked with a wavy underline (tap or point at one to see the note); the rest, which could not be inferred with confidence, are left as “?”.