bear [OE] The verb bear ‘to carry’ comes from an Indo-European root found widely in European languages. Related forms are found in Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, as well as in Latin and Greek. In English it is related to bier [OE], the frame carrying a coffin or corpse. From early times bear has also been used of mental burdens, of suffering, or toleration. Wise people have encouraged us to bear and forbear (forbear is also Old English), ‘be patient and endure’, since Middle English, and from the early 19th century others have told us more briskly to grin and bear it.

Bear, the large animal, is a different Old English word that also goes back to ancient times, sharing an Indo-European root with *brown. In Stock Exchange terminology a bear [E18th] is a person who sells shares hoping to buy them back later at a lower price (the opposite of a *bull). The use is said to be from a proverb warning against ‘selling the bear’s skin before one has caught the bear’.