Contextualizebeta

dern

noun
/ˈdɜː(ɹ)n/

Etymology

From Middle English dernen, dærnen, from Old English dyrnan, diernan (“to keep secret, conceal, hide, restrain, repress, hide oneself”), from Proto-West Germanic *darnijan (“to conceal”), from *darnī (“hidden, secret”). Cognate with Old Saxon dernian (“to conceal”), German tarnen (“to camouflage, disguise”). See also darn, tarnish.

  1. derived from *darnī✻ — “hidden, secret”
  2. inherited from dyrne
  3. inherited from dern

Definitions

  1. A secret

    A secret; secrecy.

  2. A secret place

    A secret place; hiding.

  3. An obscure language.

  4. ›+ 6 more definitions

    1. Darkness

      Darkness; obscurity.

    2. Hidden

      Hidden; secret; private.

      • 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.

    3. To hide

      To hide; secrete, as in a hole.

      • He at length escaped them by derning himself in a fox-earth.

    4. To hide oneself

      To hide oneself; skulk.

      • But look how soon they heard of Holoferne / Their courage quail'd, and they began to derne.

    5. A gatepost or doorpost.

      • 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 […]

    6. A surname from German.

The neighborhood

Derived

dernful, in dern

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for dern. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA