Beira •airer, bearer, carer, Clara, darer, declarer, Demerara, Éire, habanera, Halmahera, parer, Perak, primavera, repairer, Rivera, Riviera, Sarah, scarer, sharer, snarer, sparer, squarer, starer, swearer, tearer, wearer •cause célèbre • torch-bearer •swordbearer • pallbearer • wayfarer •seafarer • capoeira • Phaedra •sacra, simulacra •Libra, vers libre•ex cathedra •chypre, Ypres•palaestra (US palestra) • urethra •joie de vivre •mirror, sirrah •Coimbra • Middlesbrough • Indra •Sintra •aspidistra, sistra •algebra • orchestra • vertebra •Beira, Fujairah, Hegira, Lyra, Myra, naira, palmyra, spirogyra •Hydra • Lycra •begorra, Gomorrah, horror •double entendre • genre • amour propre • Le Nôtre • contra •Cosa Nostra, rostra

Beira (bā´rə), region and former province, N central Portugal, S of the Douro River. The old capital was Coimbra. The province extended to the Atlantic coast between the Douro and the Mondego and SE of the Mondego to the upper Tagus. The region is now occupied by the provinces of Beira Alta (capital Viseu), Beira Baixa (capital Castelo Branco), and part of Beira Litoral (capital Coimbra) and is further subdivided into the districts of Aveiro, Viseu, Coimbra, Guarda, and Castelo Branco. The region is traversed by the Serra da Estrela, Portugal's highest mountain range. Grains, fruits, and olives are grown. Industries include fishing and the manufacture of textiles and forest products. The area had been recovered from the Moors even before Portugal was formed, but Moorish attacks continued into the 13th cent. Later Beira was contested in the incessant Portuguese-Castilian wars.

Beira (bāy´rä), city (1997 pop. 397,368), capital of Sofala province, E central Mozambique, a seaport on the Mozambique Channel (an arm of the Indian Ocean), at the mouths of the Púngoè and Búzi rivers. A commercial center, the city grew (beginning in 1891) as the terminus of a railroad into the interior. Beira has handled the foreign trade of Congo (Kinshasa), Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi as well as of Mozambique, but rail service was interrupted by bombings during the war for Zimbabwean independence in the late 1970s and was ultimately halted as a result of the Mozambique civil war.

beira: see antelope.