ter ore komen

Etymology
Literally: “to come to ear”, with a fossiled dative. The feminine dative ter indicates that oor should be feminine too. And although it is now a neuter noun, at least as recently as the fifteenth century could still have a feminine grammatical gender, giving some indication as to the considerable age of this expression. This kind of fossilized survival of an otherwise superseded grammatical gender for a noun is not unheard of in Dutch; compare for example the gender of the noun in  /  and some expressions involving the noun  (see entry).

Verb

 * 1)  to hear of something