Lear (verb, archaic or dialectal)

“Lear” is an old or regional verb meaning to teach or to learn, depending on context. In older English and Scots usage, “to lear” often meant to teach someone knowledge or skill, and sometimes it meant to gain that knowledge oneself. Over time, standard English split this into two clearer verbs: teach and learn, and “lear” fell out of common use.

Example in older usage: “He learned me the trade” or “He leared me the trade,” where modern English would say “He taught me the trade.”

Learing (variant / nonstandard spelling)

“Learing” is generally a nonstandard or archaic spelling related to learning. It appears in older texts, dialect writing, or phonetic spellings, but it is not considered correct in modern standard English. Today, the accepted form is learning.

Learning (modern standard)

Learning comes from Old English leornian, meaning to get knowledge, to study, or to cultivate the mind. It is related to Old Germanic roots tied to following a track or finding a path, which gives learning an original sense of “finding one’s way” intellectually.

So in short: Lear / learing are older or nonstandard forms tied to the same root as learn, but modern English uses learn for acquiring knowledge and teach for imparting it.

If you want, we can also trace how English deliberately separated “teach” and “learn” over time, because that split tells an interesting story about clarity, power, and authority in language.

idk man, maybe the Somalians got this right?