Definition of "oar"

oar

/ɔː/

noun
plural oars
1. A type of lever used to propel a boat, having a flat blade at one end and a handle at the other, and pivoted in a rowlock atop the gunwale, whereby a rower seated in the boat and pulling the handle can pass the blade through the water by repeated strokes against the water's resistance, thus moving the boat.
2. An oarsman; a rower.
3. (zoology) An oar-like swimming organ of various invertebrates.
verb
third-person singular simple present oars, present participle oaring, simple past and past participle oared
1. (literary) To row; to travel with, or as if with, oars.
  Quotations
  The weather was fine, and whilst oaring along I would fain have landed on the islands between; but fearful of a change, and already half worn-out by my previous trail, I let them go by with the comforting resolve of turning them up on some future occasion.
  1866, Thomas S. Muir, Barra Head, page 52
  Turning the long tables upside down — and there were twelve of them — they seated themselves, one behind another, within the upturned table tops as though they were boats and were about to oar their way into some fabulous ocean.
  1950, Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode
  In Nopsca's theory, flight evolved as a means of running more quickly over the ground: "Birds originated from bipedal, long-tailed cursorial reptiles which during running oared along in the air by flapping their free anterior extremities."
  1996, Peter J. Bowler, Life's Splendid Drama