boor [M16th] Before the Norman Conquest a gebūr was a peasant or tenant farmer, and the source of boor, ‘a rough and bad-mannered person’. The Normans swept away the Anglo-Saxon social structure, and with it the word, until in the mid 16th century English readopted it from related Dutch and German words meaning a peasant or rustic. The word is also found in neighbour—literally a ‘nigh or near boor’ and in use in Old English.