ken
verbEtymology
Northern English dialects and Scots language from Middle English kennen, from Old English cennan (“make known, declare, acknowledge”) originally “to make known”, causative of cunnan (“to become acquainted with, to know”), from Proto-West Germanic *kannijan, from Proto-Germanic *kannijaną, causative of *kunnaną (“be able”), from which comes the verb can. Cognate with West Frisian kenne (“to know; recognise”), Dutch kennen (“to know”), German kennen (“to know, be acquainted with someone/something”), Norwegian Bokmål kjenne, Norwegian Nynorsk kjenna, Old Norse kenna (“to know, perceive”), Swedish känna (“to know, feel”), Danish kende (“to know”). See also: can, con.
Definitions
To give birth, conceive, beget, be born
To give birth, conceive, beget, be born; to develop (as a fetus); to nourish, sustain (as life).
- To the soul this ghostly bread is the learning and the teaching and the understanding in the commandments of God, wherethrough the soul is kenned and lives.
To know, perceive or understand.
- It was noted by them that kenned best that her cantrips were at their worst when the tides in the Sker Bay ebbed between the hours of twelve and one.
- Johnny: Is your name Maggie? / Maggie: How'd you ken that? / Johnny: It's just a hunch. Are you looking for the, uh, petulant dwarf?
- Ah thought he wis being harsh, flippant and show-oafy, until ah got sae far in. Now ah ken precisely what the cunt meant.
To discover by sight
To discover by sight; to catch sight of; to descry.
- 'Tis he. I ken the manner of his gate, / He riſes on the toe:
- I proposed to the Mariners, that it would be of great benefit in Navigation to make use of [the telescope] upon the round-top of a ship, to discover and kenne Vessels afar off.
- We ken them from afar.
›+ 11 more definitionsshow fewer
Range of perception.
- I had somehow the impression that he was on the point of letting go the ladder to swim away beyond my ken.
Knowledge, perception, or sight.
- So far is it from the kenne of theſe wretched projectors of ours that beſcraull their Pamflets every day with new formes of government for our Church.
- Within our ken / The Nightingale—ah! Love, the Nightingale! / Her tender sweetness made our cheeks grow pale,
- These people, these 20 or 25, were in my ken. Senator Jenner. In his what? Mr. Greenglass. My ken, my line of vision, my knowledge.
Range of sight.
- At once as far as Angels kenn he views / The dismal Situation waste and wilde […]
A house, especially a den of thieves.
- Ben mort, shall you and I heave a bough, mill a ken, or nip a bung, and then we'll couch a hogshead under the ruffmans, and there you shall wap with me, and I'll niggle with you.
- Up she goes to any likely ken, where she knows there are women that are married or expect to get married, and commences begging.
Youth or children's group.
- Gilboa and Habonim Dror also run year-round programming, holding regional reunions (called kenim) up and down the state
- Gavriella: At an annual movement conference. I went for the first time, and we proposed creating new kenim [branches] and it was approved, which is amazing!
- At the beginning of 1944 he was sent to Debreccen to operate the local ken and to organize self-defense.
A Japanese unit of length equal to six shakus.
The tsurugi (type of sword).
A diminutive of the male given name Kenneth.
Kensington in London.
- Kensington High Street — better known as High Street Ken after the nearby tube — is dominated architecturally by […]
- The ladies (and gentlemen) of South Ken and Chelsea do like their raw food, and Daphne's does a terrific tuna tartare with avocado and wild fennel, black figs, gorgonzola and hazelnuts; […]
Synonym of Ken doll.
A surname.
The neighborhood
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for ken. 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