a. That which is taught; (a person's) doctrine or teaching. Applied chiefly to religious doctrine, but used also with reference to moral principles (e.g. virtue's lore). Now poetic or archaic.

†b. plural. Doctrines, precepts, ordinances. Obsolete.

†c. A form of doctrine, a creed, religion. Obsolete.

†d. Rule of behaviour. Obsolete.

a. That which is learned; learning, scholarship, erudition. Now only archaic and Scottish (in the form lair, lear n.¹). Also, in later use, applied (with a colouring derived from contexts like quot. 1766) to the body of traditional facts, anecdotes, or beliefs relating to some particular subject; chiefly with attributive noun, as animal lore, bird lore, fairy lore, plant lore.In the Gentl. Mag. for June, 1830, p. 503, a correspondent suggested that English compounds of lore should be substituted for the names of sciences in -ology: e.g. birdlore for ornithology, earthlore for geology, starlore for astronomy, etc. The suggestion was never adopted, though some few words out of the long list of those proposed are occasionally used, not as names of sciences, but in the sense above explained. In German, several compounds of the equivalent lehre are in regular use as names of sciences or departments of study: e.g. sprachlehre (= speech-lore) grammar. Cf. folklore n.

†b. A body of knowledge, a science. Obsolete.

a. in insects, a horny appendage in the mouth of certain Hymenoptera, upon which the mentum or chin is carried (also in quasi-Latin form lora).

b. in birds, a space between the eye and the side of the superior mandible, sometimes naked.