Definition of "ear"

Judge Short had gone to town, and Farrar was off for a three days' cruise up the lake. I was bitterly regretting I had not gone with him when the distant notes of a coach horn reached my ear, and I descried a four-in-hand winding its way up the inn road from the direction of Mohair.

1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.

No I'm not kidding, and if you don't give it to me I'll let it out that you’re an ear.

1976, Stirling Silliphant, Dean Riesner, Gail Morgan Hickman, The Enforcer

songs […] not all ungrateful to thine ear

1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], (please specify |part=prologue or epilogue, or |canto=I to CXXIX)

Dionysius […] would give no ear to his suit.

1625, Francis [Bacon], Apophthegmes New and Old. […], London: […] Hanna Barret, and Richard Whittaker, […]

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.

1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act III, scene ii]

They don’t know if they’re going to have a job in a week or a month. They don’t know if they can pay the rising prices. Instead of the paradise they expected July 1, their total existence is unsure. That some foreigners get beaten—nobody has an ear for that now.

1990 August 19, Uwe Stelbrink, quotee, “Fear and uncertainty breed xenophobia in E. Germany”, in Democrat and Chronicle, volume 158, Rochester, N.Y., page 5A

When they got as far as the little valley north of Oppenhagen - where the land-slip took place - he thought he sat between the ears of a bucket; but shortly this vanished also, and it was only then he really came to himself again.

1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 291

In journalism, ears flank the title as boxes in the left and right top corners of a publication (generally a newspaper).

2006, Richard Weiner, Charles M. Levine, The Skinny about Best Boys, Dollies, Green Rooms, Leads, and Other Media Lingo, page 26

I eared her language.

1613–1614 (date written), John Fletcher, William Shak[e]speare, The Two Noble Kinsmen: […], London: […] Tho[mas] Cotes, for Iohn Waterson; […], published 1634, (please specify the page), (please specify the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals)

Sometimes, the helper eared the horse down; and sometimes he used a blindfold.

1964, John Hendrix, If I Can Do It Horseback: A Cow-Country Sketchbook, page 40

The general technique was to rope the horse around the neck, and, while one or two men eared the horse down (held him by the ears), the rider saddled the animal and stepped above him.

2013, Fay E. Ward, The Cowboy at Work

That power I have, discharge; and let them goTo ear the land that hath some hope to grow,For I have none.

1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The life and death of King Richard the Second”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals)

And the elders of that city shall bring down the heifer unto a rough valley, which is neither eared nor sown, and shall strike off the heifer's neck there in the valley

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Deuteronomy 21:4