fere

plural feres · alternative feer · alternative pheer

1. dialectalobsoleteA companion, comrade or friend.

   they swange oute their swerdis and slowe of noble men of armys mo than an hondred – and than they rode ayen to theire ferys.

   1485, Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur, Book V

2. archaicA person's spouse, or an animal's mate.

   And Cambel tooke Cambrina to his fere.

   1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto III”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 52

   2 more examples

   The lamb rejoiceth in the year, / And raceth freely with his fere, / And answers to his mother’s calls / From the flower’d furrow.

   1830, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Supposed Confessions of a Second-Rate Sensitive Mind

   What if my Duncan be the youth whom his wicked brother hurled into the ravine, come again in a new body, to live out his life on the earth, cut short by his brother’s hatred? If so, his persecution of you, and of your mother for your sake, is easy to understand. And if so, you will never be able to rest till you find your fere, wherever she may have been born on the face of the earth.

   1864, George MacDonald, The Old Nurse's Story

comparative more fere · superlative most fere

1. obsoleteFierce.

   Man's flesh they eat: their own they paint and sear, / branding with burning iron, — usage fere!

   1880, Richard Francis Burton, Os Lusíadas, volume II, page 405