Definition of "hoar"

His grants are engrafted on the public law of Europe, covered with the awful hoar of innumerable ages.

1796, Edmund Burke, A Letter from the Right Honourable Edmund Burke to a Noble Lord, 10th edition, London: For J. Owen, and F. and C. Rivington, page 52

hoar waters

1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, stanza 10

old trees with trunks all hoar

1816, Lord Byron, “Canto III”, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Canto the Third, London: Printed for John Murray, […], stanza CI

Bright fell the moonlight on pillar and court and shattered wall, hiding all their rents and imperfections in its silver garment, and clothing their hoar majesty with the peculiar glory of the night.

1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887

And lo, where rapt in beauty's heavenly dreamHoar Plato walks his olived Academe.

1751, Thomas Warton, Newmarket, a Satire

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.

1847 November 1, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie, Boston, Mass.: William D. Ticknor & Company, (please specify either |part=I or II)

But a hare that is hoar / Is too much for a score / When it hoars ere it be spent.

c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act II, scene iv], line 134

The great popularity of the Stuarts—certainly more allied to personal causes than we can at present calculate—is a curious fact. It was not one of those feelings drawn from hoar antiquity, when habit has become religion.

1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVI, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), page 173

But a hare that is hoar / Is too much for a score / When it hoars ere it be spent.

c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act II, scene iv], line 136