earn.
To gain (success, reward, recognition) through applied effort or work.
Meaning & usage
To gain (success, reward, recognition) through applied effort or work.
You can have the s'mores: you earned them, clearing the walkway of snow so well.
With their hard work and dedication, they earned respect and a seat at the table.
To receive payment for work or for a role or position held (regardless of whether effort was applied or whether the remuneration is deserved or commensurate).
He earns seven million dollars a year as CEO. My bank account is only earning one percent interest.
She earns more than forty thousand dollars a year in passive income from her parents' investments — that's what she gets before she even gets out of bed or lifts a finger.
To receive payment for work.
Now that you are earning, you can start paying me rent.
To cause (someone) to receive payment or reward.
My CD earns me six percent!
In that era, all their long, hard, dangerous labor in the mines barely earned them even enough to eat!
To achieve by being worthy of.
to earn a spot in the top 20
Where this word comes from
From Middle English ernen, from Old English earnian, from Proto-West Germanic *aʀanōn, from Proto-Germanic *azanōną. This verb is denominal from the noun *azaniz (“harvest”).
To curdle (milk), especially in the cheesemaking process.
Of milk: to curdle, especially in the cheesemaking process.
Where this word comes from
Probably either: * from Middle English erne, ernen (“to coagulate, congeal”) (chiefly South Midlands) [and other forms], a metathetic variant of rennen (“to run; to coagulate, congeal”), from Old English rinnan (“to run”) (with the variants iernan, irnan) and Old Norse rinna (“to move quickly, run; of liquid: to flow, run; to melt”), both from Proto-Germanic *rinnaną, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₃er- (“to move, stir; to rise, spring”); or * a back-formation from earning (“(Britain regional, archaic) rennet”).
To strongly long or yearn (for something or to do something).
To grieve.
Where this word comes from
A variant of yearn.
Alternative form of erne
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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.