Pl. ǁ lares, lars. Also 7 larre. [L. lār, pl. larēs, earlier lasēs.]
1. Roman Myth. a. pl. The tutelary deities of a house; household gods; hence, the home. Often coupled with Penates. b. sing. A household or ancestral deity; also transf. and fig.
1586. T. B., La Primaud. Fr. Acad., I. (1594), 473. The ancients had a private and houshold god, whom they called lar, which we may translate into our language, the god of the harth.
1600. Holland, Livy, VIII. ix. 287. O yee Lares and domestical gods.
1629. Milton, Christ’s Nativity, 191. In consecrated Earth, And on the holy Hearth, The Lars, and Lemures moan with midnight plaint.
1647. R. Stapylton, Juvenal, 278. Build houses; joyne to ours anothers lares; Sleepe safe, confiding in our neighbours cares.
1648. Herrick, Hesper., Pan. to Sir L. Pemberton, 4. To thee, thy lady, younglings and as farre As to thy genius and thy larre.
1742. Pope, Dunc., IV. 366. So shall each youth … keep his Lares, tho’ his house be sold.
1775. H. Walpole, Lett. (1857), VI. 270. I am returned to my own Lares and Penates—to my dogs and cats.
1832. L. Hunt, Poems, 239. So shall no disease or jar Hurt thy house, or chill thy Lar.
1889. Lowell, Oracle of Goldfishes, Last Poems (1895), 14. You were my wonders, you my Lars, in darkling days my sun and stars.
1889. Athenæum, 20 July, 88/3. Thomas Pitt … through his sons and daughters, the great lar of not fewer than five families in the English peerage.
† c. A sprite, hobgoblin. Obs.
1598. Florio, Mazzaruolo, a sprite … a hodgpoker, a lar in the chimney.
2. Zool. The white-handed gibbon of Burmah, Hylobates lar.
1819. Rees, Cycl., s.v., The lar, or, as it is sometimes denominated the gibbon.
1859. Wood, Nat. Hist., I. 34. The Lar, or White-handed Gibbon.
