Appear Meaning
/əˈpɪə/Definition, CEFR level A2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
verbTo come or be in sight; to be in view; to become visible.
verbTo come before the public.
Sentence Examples
The king will appear in person tomorrow evening.
I waited for an hour, but he didn't appear.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The magician asked the rabbit to ____ from the empty hat on stage.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The stars began to ____ in the dark sky as soon as the sun went down.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English apperen, aperen, borrowed from Old French aparoir (French apparoir), from Latin appāreō (“to appear”), from ad (“to”) + pāreō (“to come forth, to become visible”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂-s- (“watch, see”), s-present of *peh₂- (“protect”).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"And God[…]said, Let[…]the dry land appear."
— 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Genesis 1:9:
"There were also particles no one had predicted that just appeared. Five of them […, i]n order of increasing modernity, […] are the neutrino, the pi meson, the antiproton, the quark and the Higgs boson."
— 2012 March-April, Jeremy Bernstein, “A Palette of Particles”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, page 146:
"Miss Phyllis Morgan, as the hapless heroine dressed in the shabbiest of clothes, appears in the midst of a gay and giddy throng; she apostrophises all and sundry there, including the villain, and has a magnificent scene which always brings down the house, and nightly adds to her histrionic laurels."
— 1904–1905, Baroness Orczy [i.e., Emma Orczy], “The Affair at the Novelty Theatre”, in The Case of Miss Elliott, London: T[homas] Fisher Unwin, published 1905, →OCLC; republished as popular edition, London: Greening & Co., 1909, OCLC 11192831, quoted in The Case of Miss Elliott (ebook no. 2000141h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg of Australia, February 2020:
"We must all appear before the judgment seat."
— 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, 2 Corinthians 5:10:
"One ruffian escaped because no prosecutor dared to appear."
— 1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter XII, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC:
Explore More A2 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The magician asked the rabbit to ____ from the empty hat on stage.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The stars began to ____ in the dark sky as soon as the sun went down.