This one’s pretty easy: pouring something over a book would mean spilling something on it. Poring over a book means reading it with great attention. Pour and pore are never interchangeable; they are two completely different words.
Pour and pore are homophones—words that sound alike but have different spellings and different meanings. Probably the most famous triplet of homophones, and the most annoying to those of us who like to see words written properly, is there, their, and they’re.
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In this article, while we’re trying to figure out what it means to pore over something, we’ll come across another pair of commonly confused homophones—pore and pour. When you use the phrase “to pore over a book,” it’s important to keep these two straight. If you use pore, you’ll be saying you’re reading the book carefully. If you use pour, you’ll be saying that you’re spilling something on the book.
As a verb, pore means “to gaze intently” or “to reflect or meditate steadily.” The verb pour has meanings referring to the falling or streaming of liquid (or things that move like liquid). Pour over is occasionally found where pore over is called for, but is still considered a usage error.
So, you might say: “I poured myself another cup of coffee and pored through the newspaper’s horoscope section, hoping for good news and lucky lotto numbers.”
This question came up during a round of in-house editing this week, so – of course –I wanted to share:
“Pore” means to study or read something with great care. You’d pore over a textbook or a website; you could even pore over the details of an especially interesting dream you had the night before.
“Pour” on the other hand, is something you do with a liquid. It’s the word for what you do with, say, a bottle of water or a pot of coffee.
Pore definition and examples
The verb pore is a word whose roots are hard to trace. It might have its origin in the Old English root purian, which is found in spyrian—to investigate—and spor—a trace or a vestige. Today we usually use the verb pore with the adverbs “over” or “through.” It means
To read or study something carefully:
Instead of hiring expensive assistants to pore over cases and sort through tickets, law firms are increasingly turning toward artificially-intelligent machines to do the expensive menial jobs instead.
Three years ago, Devon Trevelyan took a chance on the classic war-themed game of “Risk”—and about 1,000 other board games—when he opened Knight Moves, a Brooklyn cafe where people gather to wind down and pore over puzzles and strategy games.
Speaking of pore, it might also be worth mentioning that there’s another word spelled the same—pore, the noun, which means:
A small opening on a surface such as skin, leaves, or even rocks:
There’s no denying it—pore strips are extremely satisfying.
With an all-solid mahogany top, back and sides and an open-pore finish that’s smooth and soft to the touch, it’s the perfect acoustic complement for passionate players who prefer a more natural look and feel.
It’s Raining It’s Pouring Lyric Video – The Kiboomers Preschool Songs & Nursery Rhymes
FAQ
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