overwordExplorer
ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

acorn.

The fruit of the oak, being an oval nut growing in a woody cup or cupule.

5 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈeɪ.kɔɹn/General-American/ˈeɪkɚn/General-American/ˈeɪ.kɔːn/Received-Pronunciation

  1. The fruit of the oak, being an oval nut growing in a woody cup or cupule.

  2. A cone-shaped piece of wood on the point of the spindle above the vane, on the mast-head.

  3. See acorn-shell.

  4. The glans penis.

    informal

  5. A testicle.

    plural-normally · slang
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂ógr̥der.? Proto-Germanic *akraną Proto-West Germanic *akarn Old English æcern ▲ Middle English corninflu. Middle English acorn English acorn Inherited from Middle English acorn, an alteration (after corn) of earlier *akern, from Old English æcern (“acorn, oak-mast”), from Proto-West Germanic *akarn, from Proto-Germanic *akraną (“fruit; acorn, nut”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂égrō (“berry”). Cognates Cognate with Scots aicorn (“acorn”), Dutch aker (“acorn”), German Ecker (“acorn”), Danish agern (“acorn”), Faroese and Icelandic akarn (“acorn”), Norwegian Nynorsk åkorn (“acorn”), Gothic 𐌰𐌺𐍂𐌰𐌽 (akran, “fruit”); Irish airne (“sloe”), Welsh aeron (“berries; small fruits”), eirin (“plums”), Latgalian ūga (“berry”), Latvian oga (“berry”), Lithuanian uoga (“berry”), Belarusian я́гада (jáhada, “berry”), Bulgarian, Russian, and Ukrainian я́года (jáhoda, “berry”), Czech and Slovak jahoda (“strawberry”), Macedonian ја́года (jágoda, “strawberry”), Polish and Slovene jagoda (“berry”), Serbo-Croatian ја̏года, jȁgoda (“strawberry”), Tocharian A and Tocharian B oko (“fruit”). Not related to Old English āc (“oak”), corn (“corn, seed”) or Middle English acquerne.

FROM WORD TO NAME

Try it on your idea.

acorn has 5 characters. Say it out loud, try it alongside a description of your project, and see whether its meaning fits what you want to create.

acorn studioacorn workshello, acorn

These are naming prompts. Meanings and pronunciation can vary; existing brand and domain uses have not been checked.

Explore the name generator

A word with a source.

Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.