kern.
A corn; grain; kernel.
Meaning & usage
A corn; grain; kernel.
The last handful or sheaf reaped at the harvest.
The harvest home.
A doll or figurine raised in celebration of a successful harvest; kern-baby.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English curn, cooren, variant forms of Middle English corn, see English corn and also Dutch kern, Old High German kerno, cherno, Middle High German kerne, kern, German Kern (“core, kernel”), Old Norse kjarni, Icelandic kjarni, Danish kjerne, Swedish kärna (“core, kernel”); see also kernel.
Any part of a letter which extends into the space used by another letter.
Where this word comes from
From French carne (“corner; projecting angle; quill of a pen”), from Latin cardinem (“hinge”) or from Etymology 1. The verb is a back-formation from kerned, which is from the noun. Doublet of cardo.
To adjust the horizontal space between selected pairs of letters (characters or glyphs); to perform such adjustments to a portion of text, according to preset rules.
Where this word comes from
From French carne (“corner; projecting angle; quill of a pen”), from Latin cardinem (“hinge”) or from Etymology 1. The verb is a back-formation from kerned, which is from the noun. Doublet of cardo.
A light-armed foot soldier of the ancient militia of Ireland and Scotland; in archaic contexts often used as a term of contempt.
A boor; a low person.
An idler; a vagabond.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English kerne, from Middle Irish ceithern. Doublet of quaternion.
A churn.
Alternative form of quern.
Try it on your idea.
kern has 4 characters. Say it out loud, try it alongside a description of your project, and see whether its meaning fits what you want to create.
These are naming prompts. Meanings and pronunciation can vary; existing brand and domain uses have not been checked.
Explore the name generatorA 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.