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pern.

Part of a spinning wheel, a conical spool onto which the thread is wound from the spindle.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/pɜː(ɹ)n/
  1. Part of a spinning wheel, a conical spool onto which the thread is wound from the spindle.

Where this word comes from

Presumably from a verb pern, a variant of preen, from Middle English prene; pernyng is read by some editors in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (v. 611) and interpreted as the present participle of this verb, also reflected dialectally as pirn (“reel; bobbin”). See also pirl.

noun/pɜː(ɹ)n/
  1. A honey buzzard; Pernis apivorus.

Where this word comes from

19th century, after the taxonomical name Pernis (Cuvier 1816).

verb/pɜː(ɹ)n/
  1. To take profit of; to make profitable.

    obsolete · transitive
Where this word comes from

See pernancy.

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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.