dern
/ˈdɜː(ɹ)n/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 2.51 in modern English
5
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "Now with their backs to the den's mouth they sit, / Yet shoulder not all light from the dern pit."
- "Through dreary beds of tangled fern, / Through groves of nightshade dark and dern."
- "He at length escaped them by derning himself in a fox-earth."
- "But look how soon they heard of Holoferne / Their courage quail'd, and they began to derne."
- "1855, Charles Kingsley, Westward Ho!, Ch. XIV, How Salvation Yeo Slew the King of the Gubbings So I just put my eye between the wall and the dern of the gate, and I saw him come up to the back door […]"
Etymology
From Middle English dern, derne, from Old English dyrne, dierne (“secret”), from Proto-West Germanic *darnī (“hidden, secret”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *dʰer-, dern, dyrne, *darnī, dernen, dyrnan
Usage
Inflected Forms
derns (plural)
more dern (comparative)
most dern (superlative)
derns (present, singular)
derning (participle, present)
derned (participle, past)
derned (past)