What does "bore" mean?

Bore: To form or enlarge by means of a boring instrument or apparatus; as, to bore a steam cylinder or a gun barrel; to bore a hole. Short but very powerful jaws, by means whereof the insect can bore, as with a centerbit, a cylindrical passage through the most solid wood. T. W. Harris.

Additional senses

  1. 2.To make (a passage) by laborious effort, as in boring; as, to bore one's way through a crowd; to force a narrow and difficult passage through. "What bustling crowds I bored." Gay.
  2. 3.To weary by tedious iteration or by dullness; to tire; to trouble; to vex; to annoy; to pester. He bores me with some trick. Shak. Used to come and bore me at rare intervals. Carlyle.
  3. 4.To befool; to trick. [Obs.] I am abused, betrayed; I am laughed at, scorned, Baffled and bored, it seems. Beau. & Fl.
  4. 5.To make a hole or perforation with, or as with, a boring instrument; to cut a circular hole by the rotary motion of a tool; as, to bore for water or oil (i. e., to sink a well by boring for water or oil); to bore with a gimlet; to bore into a tree (as insects).
  5. 6.To be pierced or penetrated by an instrument that cuts as it turns; as, this timber does not bore well, or is hard to bore.
  6. 7.To push forward in a certain direction with laborious effort. They take their flight . . . boring to the west. Dryden.
  7. 8.(Ma To shoot out the nose or toss it in the air; Crabb.
  8. 9.A hole made by boring; a perforation.
  9. 10.The internal cylindrical cavity of a gun, cannon, pistol, or other firearm, or of a pipe or tube. The bores of wind instruments. Bacon. Love's counselor should fill the bores of hearing. Shak.
  10. 11.The size of a hole; the interior diameter of a tube or gun barrel; the caliber.
  11. 12.A tool for making a hole by boring, as an auger.
  12. 13.Caliber; importance. [Obs.] Yet are they much too light for the bore of the matter. Shak.
  13. 14.A person or thing that wearies by prolixity or dullness; a tiresome person or affair; any person or thing which causes ennui. It is as great a bore as to hear a poet read his own verses. Hawthorne.
  14. 15.(a) A tidal flood which regularly or occasionally rushes into certain rivers of peculiar configuration or location, in one or more waves which present a very abrupt front of considerable height, dangerous to shipping, as at the mouth of the Amazon, in South America, the Hoogly and Indus, in India, and the Tsien-tang, in China. (b) Less properly, a very high and rapid tidal flow, when not so abrupt, such as occurs at the Bay of Fundy and in the British Channel.
  15. 16.imp. of 1st & 2d Bear.

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