An archaic or dialectal spelling of 'deer,' the hoofed forest animal.
Old English 'deor' or 'dere', which originally meant any wild animal, not just the modern sense of deer. The spelling 'deare' is a Middle English variant reflecting pronunciation changes.
The word 'deer' shows how spelling wasn't standardized in English for centuries—you'd see 'deare,' 'dere,' 'deere' in texts from the 1400s-1600s, and printers couldn't agree until dictionaries became authoritative.
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