A black, oily, sticky, viscous substance, consisting mainly of hydrocarbons derived from organic materials such as wood, peat, or coal.
"The musician played a lively rhythm on his tar while dancing under the moonlit sky."
A program for archiving files, common on Unix systems.
A Persian long-necked, waisted instrument, shared by many cultures and countries in the Middle East and the Caucasus.
A single-headed round frame drum originating in North Africa and the Middle East.
In plain English: Tar is a thick, black sticky substance that comes from burning wood and was once used to seal roofs but now mostly covers roads after they are paved.
"The workers covered the pothole with fresh tar to stop water from getting in."
Usage: Use "tar" to refer specifically to the thick black substance used for sealing roofs or roads rather than general sticky materials like glue. Do not confuse this word with similar-sounding terms when describing musical instruments from the Middle East, which have distinct names such as tar (the string instrument) or riq (the drum).
To coat with tar.
"The system administrator used the command to tar all configuration files before backing them up."
To create a tar archive.
Initialism of Tibet Autonomous Region, an administrative region of China.
"During our trip to Eastern Europe, we spent a few days visiting Tar, a small but charming village in Hungary."
A village in Hungary.
The word "tar" comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *dóru, which originally meant "tree." It entered English through Old English teoru and related Germanic forms that referred to the resin or pitch derived from trees.