tir

The root tir comes from Old French tirer, 'to draw, pull, drag' (and, by extension, 'to shoot' — to draw a bow). It is a 'pulling' root, and almost every English descendant is some kind of drawing-out, drawing-back, or drawing-together.

Start with the most worn-down member: tire. To tire is to be 'drawn out' of energy — pulled empty until nothing is left. tired is the state, tiresome is what does the draining (a tiresome chore pulls the life out of you). The rubber tire on a wheel belongs here too, oddly: it was originally the iron band 'drawn' tight around a wooden wheel to hold it together — the 'attire' of the wheel.

The most useful prefix family is retire: re- (back) + tir = 'to draw back, withdraw.' A soldier retires from the field; a person retires from a career; at night you retire to bed. retirement is the drawn-back state, and retiring describes someone whose nature is to pull back from attention — shy, unassuming. Notice how 'withdraw' covers all of these: leaving work, leaving a room, hanging back socially.

attire is a- (to) + tirer: originally 'to put in order by drawing together,' which came to mean 'to dress' — your attire is what you've drawn on and arranged. And tirade is the dramatic one: from Italian tirata, 'a pulling, a volley,' a speech 'drawn out' at angry length — a long, pulled-taut stream of denunciation.

So across the family, picture a rope being pulled: pulled empty (tire), pulled back (retire), pulled together to dress (attire), or pulled out into a long blast (tirade).