Also 7 soare. [f. SOAR v., perh. partly after F. essor.]
In Beaum. & Fletcher’s Bonduca IV. iv. the second folio (1679), has ‘fearless of your bloody soars’; but the reading of the first folio (1647), is ‘fears,’ evidently a misprint for ‘sears,’ i.e., claws.
1. The altitude attained in soaring; range of flight upwards. Also fig.
1596. Edward III., II. i. C. Fly it a pitch aboue the soare of praise.
1667. Milton, P. L., V. 270. Within soare Of Towring Eagles.
1792. S. Rogers, Pleas. Mem., I. 361. That eye so finely wrought Beyond the search of sense, the soar of thought.
1804. J. Grahame, Sabbath (1839), 22/1. A splendid cloud appeared…; then hovering, floats, High as the soar of eagle.
1892. Pall Mall Gaz., 26 May, 7/1. It requires the highest soar of fancy to imagine [etc.].
2. The act of soaring or rising high.
1817. Coleridge, Satyrane’s Lett., ii. in Biog. Lit. (1882), 252. A liberated bird … who now after his first soar of freedom poises himself in the upper air.
1820. Scott, Abbot, xv. It is ill whistling for a hawk when she is once on the soar.
1870. Rossetti, Poems, Ho. Life, iv. Just when at that swallow’s soar Your neck turned so.
transf. 1825. Beddoes, Poems, To Bryan Procter, 166. Wings upraise thee long In the unvacillating soar of song.
1854. Lowell, Fireside Trav. (1864), 321. There is none of the spring and soar which one may see even in the Lombard churches.
1890. Saintsbury, Elizab. Lit., iv. 102. A little later we meet with that towering soar of verse which is also peculiar to the period.
